


To Be Human

by MiladyDragon



Series: Dragon-Verse: Series Two [6]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Character Death, Dragon-Verse, Dragons, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-27
Updated: 2012-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-15 03:24:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 33,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiladyDragon/pseuds/MiladyDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An attempted home invasion puts the team on the trail of an alien sleeper cell intent on invasion, and Gwen gets a lesson on what it means to be human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have now posted all of my completed Dragon-Verse stories here, and am now starting with the works in progress. This is the Dragon-Verse version of Sleeper.

 

**_28 June 2008_ **

****

Jack curled up against his dragon, glad that Ianto was back where he belonged.

There wasn’t much of a moon, but the glare from the street lights outside gave enough light for Jack to see by…when he wasn’t dozing against the warm flank of his mate, after the last several hours of welcoming Ianto home.  The stress of having his mate exchanged for another version of Ianto Jones had been getting to him, and Jack had needed that reconnection to his mate that being intimate had brought. 

He could tell that Ianto felt the same way.  The dragon’s eyes were closed, and his steady breathing lulled Jack even deeper into rest.

Eventually, Jack knew he’d have to get up to arm the alarm system and to turn off the lights they’d left on downstairs in their rush to get to the loft – they hadn’t even made it that far for round one – but for now he was content to stay where he was, luxuriating in the heat of his mate.  Jack couldn’t see himself ever getting tired of just being like this, with Ianto tucked around him almost protectively, the silky sharpness of dragons’ scale against his back and side like the finest armour…and the softest cloth.  It was a contradiction, the way they felt, but it was the closest Jack could come to describing the sensation. 

There would always be a part of him that would wish that, some day, he would find a way to be with Ianto as a dragon, like the dreams that the Great Dragons had sent them.  But Jack knew that wouldn’t be possible, even with all the magic in the world…and there was a niggling bit of him that still didn’t want to believe in magic, that thought everything he’d seen could be described by advanced enough science.  He didn’t know where this disbelieving part of him came from, but it was there, and Jack couldn’t deny it.

Maybe one day he’d come to embrace magic, but for now Jack didn’t see how. 

He stopped worrying about it, and tucked up closer to the dragon, letting the contented grin he couldn’t stop curl across his face.

Jack had no idea how long he lay there, but he was rudely pulled from his rest by the sharp ring of the door bell.

The dragon body next to his jumped slightly, seemingly as startled as Jack had been.  “Who is that, at this time of night?” he grumbled, raising his large head.

“It better be good,” Jack answered, getting up.  His clothes were all scattered about downstairs, so he headed toward the stairs still naked.   “I’ll get it.”

“Fine, but hurry back.”  The dragon shifted once more, settling back into place in their nest.

Jack collected his shirt from the stairway, and his trousers from the back of the sofa, as he made his way toward the door.  He did fasten his fly, but didn’t bother with his shirt as he pulled the front door open.  “Owen,” he said, surprised at the medic’s appearance at their door at…he glanced at the clock on the mantel, and saw that it was after eleven.

“Thank God you came to the door halfway dressed,” Owen responded.  He looked nervous, which was completely out of character for him.

“If I’d known it was you I would have done without the shirt.”  He couldn’t help but tease the man, even though Jack was concerned as to the reason why Owen would be there this late.

Owen rolled his eyes.  “I’ve seen it, and I’m not impressed.”  He sighed, running his hands through his hair.  “Can I come in?  I know it’s late but I really need to talk to you and Ianto about something.”

Jack’s concern grew.  He stepped aside, letting the medic enter.  Owen automatically removed his shoes at the mat; apparently he’d been on the receiving end of one of Ianto’s lectures about messing up the carpet.   “It’s fine,” Jack assured him, “we weren’t asleep.  And you didn’t interrupt anything else, in case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t, but that’s a good thing. I was gonna wait until tomorrow, but I took the chance when I saw the lights still on.”

“C’mon up.”  Jack started up the stairs, Owen following.  He was very curious as to what would have brought Owen there at that time of night.  It must have been something bothering him, when Jack had thought he’d have been home or at the nearest pub.   “It’s Owen,” he called up, in order to warn the dragon that he wasn’t alone.

“I heard,” came the answer.  “Tell him he has to wait until usual business hours for his coffee.”

“Blow it out your arse, Dragon Boy,” Owen snarked back, raising his voice in order to be heard.  Jack could tell that the banter had relaxed his friend just from the tone of his voice.

Ianto hadn’t changed back to human form, but he was awake and watchful as Jack and Owen entered the loft.  His blue cats’ eyes were curious as they tracked Owen across the room, where the medic grabbed the nearest chair and dragged it over to the nest area.  Jack took his usual spot, leaning against the dragon’s side, and for Owen’s peace of mind he kept his clothes on.  “What can we do for you?” he asked, putting on his best boss’ expression.

Owen sighed.  “I probably could have waited until morning, but I thought you both might want to know about something I overheard today, when we had that other version of Ianto around.  It concerns Gwen and something she said to him.”

Jack should have guessed.  While he hadn’t seen Gwen actually approach their guest, it should have occurred to him that she would have.  Damn it, he should have kept a closer eye on their visitor…

The dragon’s slitted eyes narrowed.  “Please tell me she didn’t do what I’m thinking she did.”

“If you mean did she go off on him?  Pretty much, yeah.”

“Oh goddess,” Jack sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.  “I really should have expected something like that.”  He should have kept Gwen well away from the other Ianto.

“What exactly did she say?” Ianto asked.

“She basically accused him of doing something to fool the rest of us to get us to trust him,” Owen reported.  “Then she said that all Iantos are inhuman and can’t be trusted.”

“When did this happen?” Jack demanded.  He was thoroughly pissed off at himself for not doing more to have kept them apart.

“Right after lunch.  I’m sorry I didn’t bring it up before, but the other Ianto seemed to handle her just fine.  But then you called her out in front of us all about pushing that damned button and I knew I had to say something.  I was going to wait for morning, but I got to thinking about it and realised I wanted to get it off my chest as soon as I could.”  He looked contrite, and Jack couldn’t hold it against him for not speaking up sooner.

He waved off the apology.  “You’re telling us now, that’s the important thing.  What else did she say?”

Owen grimaced.  “She claimed that the other Ianto had corrupted Rhys and that it was obvious her doppelganger must have seen through it, that she must have shown Jack real love and that’s why she wasn’t in that version of Torchwood.”

Jack actually shivered.  “I may just have nightmares about that.”

“You and me both,” Ianto mirrored his shiver.  “From what I learned in the other universe, the reason Gwen wasn’t in that version of Torchwood was because of certain…delusions she had.  Also, she was slightly precognizant, which led her to cross the other team’s path more than luck would do. “

“Bloody hell,” Owen swore.  “I can also guess what she was delusional about.”  He met Jack’s eyes, and there was something very knowing in them that had him feeling a bit uncomfortable.

“That’s pretty much what the other version of Ianto told me,” Jack said, clearing his throat.  “And yes, I know what I’ve done to encourage her, but that’s been over for a long time now.  It’s not my fault she won’t take ‘no’ for an answer or that she won’t accept that she’s simply a member of the team and not irreplaceable.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t been any better,” Owen admitted.  “I wish I’d never slept with her.  Hell, I’m not even sure why I did; it just seemed like a good idea at the time.  And I won’t lie…she was good in the sack.  But it wasn’t worth finding out that little fact.  And, when I found out she actually Retconned Rhys in order to confess it…fuck,” he raked a hand through his hair.  “She even came to me, wanting to get back into bed with me after you left, Jack.  I turned her down flat.  Two weeks later she showed up wearing Rhys’ engagement ring.  Sorry sod. He has no idea what he’s getting himself in to.”

Jack agreed.  He would always have regrets over hiring Gwen, but they were stuck with her now.  Certainly, he could always Retcon her, and get the dosage right this time, but there was still that stubborn part of him that wanted to keep her around, to help her succeed in becoming the operative that he’d believed she could be.  His hiring of her might have been for the wrong reasons, but when he’d read Ianto’s reports of the time he’d been away with the Doctor he’d seen that side of Gwen Cooper he’d always suspected was there.  Unfortunately, she’d fallen right back into bad habits after he’d come back, and he really didn’t want to examine the reasons for _that_.

“I just don’t understand her,” the dragon said, resting his head on his crossed paws.  “I don’t suppose I ever will.”

“It’s almost as if she has selective compassion,” Jack added.  “Like she thinks some people deserve it, and others don’t…and her selection process is entirely random.”

“Well, we know she doesn’t like me because I damaged her pride and lied to her,” Ianto went on.  “She’s selective about secrets, too.”

“Yeah, when she’s not the one who’s keeping them,” Owen put in.  “And there was no reason for her to accuse that other Ianto of what she did.  She had no idea what was going on in that other dimension…apart for Rhys being in Torchwood and not her.  Which, seems to me, the bloke must have the patience of a saint to put up with her.”

“I’ve been considering Rhys Williams,” Ianto pondered.  “I think, perhaps, it’s time for me to meet him.”

Jack looked at his mate closely.  “To recruit?”

“Not necessarily.  But I think I’d like to get to know this man.  Perhaps we’ve been underestimating him.  And, letting Gwen have someone outside of Torchwood who she could confide in might not be a bad idea.  After all, Toshiko has Kathy, and Owen, you have Diane…”

“I don’t really tell her much, though,” Owen denied.  “I know you’ve given me permission, because of what she already knows, but there’s this part of me that doesn’t want her to know exactly what we get up to.  I…want to protect her, even though I know she could kick my arse six ways from Sunday.”

“Yeah, you better not tell her that,” Jack said, barely hiding his smile.  It seemed that Diane Holmes – now known as Sally-Ann Hope – was still such a good influence over their irascible doctor.  “She wouldn’t like to know you were coddling her.”

“God, I’d never hear the end of it!”

Ianto chuckled.  “Speaking of Diane…we saw your request for time off.  Were you planning on going to visit her?”

Owen nodded.  “I thought I might.  That is, if you both approve a whole week off.”

“We will,” Jack said.  “You deserve it.  Ianto and I got the chance to recuperate after that Year, but you and Toshiko didn’t.”

“We plan on giving you the week off after Toshiko gets back,” Ianto added.  “We’ve already approved hers, for the week around the time we revive Tommy.”

“That makes sense,” Owen agreed.  “We all know Tommy has a thing for Tosh, and now that she’s with Kathy it might get more than a little bit awkward.”

“That’s what we thought as well.  It’s going to be difficult enough with Jack and I, and we don’t want to put her through that as well.”

“Yeah, they had some really screwed up ideas back then.  He could freak out if he knew you two were together.  Hell, he doesn’t even know Ianto is really a dragon.  Let’s just mentally scar the kid all the way around then.”

“We’d rather not.”  Jack hadn’t forgotten that they hadn’t clued Tommy in on Ianto’s true nature, but it was more out of the need not to share too much of the future with him than anything else.  Besides, when he eventually did go back to his own time, the more sense he made to the people in charge at the time the better.  It wouldn’t look at all good if he went back only to get committed to a sanatorium.    They’d been terrible places back then, and it would almost be better if Tommy got sent back to action than into an asylum.  At least he’d have a fighting chance in a warzone.

“Let me know your plans,” Ianto said, “and I can go through the Tourism Board to get you some flight discounts.  I might also manage to get you first class seating for coach rates.”

“I knew you were good for something, Dragon Boy,” Owen went back into default snark mode, which was a sure sign he’d been serious long enough.

“So you love me for more than my coffee then,” the dragon commented dryly. 

“Damn, keep that love shit confined to Harkness.  You are so not my type.”

“This is a good thing,” Jack joined in on the teasing, “because the dragon is mine and no one else’s.  And I don’t share.”

“Good, cause I don’t want any!” Owen looked nearly green. 

“Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Owen,” Jack said, thinking it was time to bring this to a close.  He wanted to discuss things with Ianto, and it was getting late. 

“Like I said, I was gonna wait, but it didn’t feel right to.”  Owen stood, obviously hearing the dismissal in Jack’s tone.  “I’ll just let myself out and turn the lights off, unless you wanna arm the alarm after I go?”

“We can do that from up here,” Ianto answered.  “Safe trip home, Owen.”

“Yeah, thanks.  I haven’t had that much to drink though.  Besides, if I get pulled over I can always harass Tosh, get her girlfriend to take care of the charge for me.”  He grinned unrepentantly.  “And this is why it’s a good idea to have a friend dating a copper.”

Ianto rolled his eyes.  “Good night, Owen.”

“Yeah, see you both in the morning.”  With those parting words, the medic headed back down the stairs, and moments later Jack heard the front door shut. 

He stood up and used the panel on the wall by the landing and turned the alarm on for the night.   Then he removed his clothes once more and sat down beside Ianto.  “I really should have kept a closer eye on Gwen when your counterpart was here,” he said wearily, practically burrowing into the dragon’s side. 

“It’s no one’s fault, Jack,” Ianto rumbled softly.  “Besides, Owen said that he seemed to handle her all right.”  He sighed, his chest lifting Jack and then settling back down.  “Perhaps we should listen to what he has said to us about her.  After all, he was an outsider, and would see more than we would.”

“You might be right.  As for now, though, we’ll watch her.”

“I don’t understand why she would be such a good field agent while you were gone, and then fall back into such bad habits when you came back.”

“Only Gwen knows what her motivations are.”  Although Jack could guess, but chances were he’d be wrong.  “If things don’t improve, then it’s Hub duty.”

“And in the meantime, I should like to talk to Rhys, if just to feel him out about letting him in on Torchwood.  Because I get the distinct feeling we’ll hear about it when Gwen realises that everyone inside of Torchwood has someone to talk to outside, and she doesn’t.”

Jack flinched.  “You’re right.  I just hate to break Torchwood’s secrecy over someone who might blow it all with a single word.  Kathy I trust, and Diane’s been through what we do…”

“I understand, Jack.  But you know this is the right thing to do, if only to settle Gwen down.”

The thing was, Jack _did_ know.  He’d been so adamant about no one outside knowing about Torchwood, that this felt like he was betraying a principle.  But Ianto was correct:  Toshiko and Owen both had someone they could talk to, albeit in somewhat broad terms.  Hell, he’d tried to recruit Kathy so many times as it was, and the detective had been through that Year.  They had a bond that no one else could even understand.

No, Ianto was on the right track.  If this Rhys was anything like the Rhys Williams was from the TARDIS version’s dimension, then it was obvious he would handle Torchwood just fine. 

“Let’s get some sleep,” Jack said.  “I get the feeling we’re going to have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

Little did Jack know how much truth was in that statement…


	2. Chapter 2

 

**_29 June 2008_ **

****

Ianto stifled a yawn as Jack pulled the SUV up as close to the scene of crime as he could, but with all the emergency vehicles in the way that was easier said than done.

It wasn’t how Ianto had wanted to spend his night, not after yesterday.  But the early morning call from Andy Davidson had he and Jack calling both Owen and Toshiko out – and Kathy hadn’t sounded happy in the background when Ianto had phoned – in order to check out with the PC had thought would warrant Torchwood’s attention.

At least it wasn’t a Rift alert.  The dragon would have felt that.  No, this was something else, and Ianto was hoping they could debunk it so the four of them could go back to their homes.  Not that he really held out all that much hope for it.

Once in the SUV Toshiko had hacked into CRIMINT and had pulled what details she could about the call-out.  Two in-custody males; one dead, the other in critical condition after falling from a fifth-floor window and onto a police car.  It had apparently been an attempted burglary, and from what the technician had been able to determine the owners of the flat – Mike and Beth Halloran – were both at hospital, although the wife had not been obviously injured. 

It had apparently been the nature of the thieves’ injuries that had tripped PC Andy’s spooky do radar from what Toshiko could interpret.  Plus, there had been a very bizarre-sounding 999 call that had began quite normally with the wife calling in the intrusion.  Toshiko managed to pull the recording, and the screams had caused a shiver to race down Ianto’s spine.   

The road of flats that Jack had pulled into was wall-to-wall pandas and ambulances.  The building that they were parked in front of looked plain and unassuming…except for the shattered fifth-floor window.  Ianto climbed out of the front passenger seat, just behind Jack who, with his usual energy, had practically exited the vehicle before pulling the parking brake and turning the engine off.  Owen and Toshiko followed, but it was obvious when Owen had noticed the first victim, splayed across the windscreen and bonnet of a partially-damaged police vehicle, just from the cursing alone.

The medic darted around Ianto, making a beeline for the injured man, his bag already off his shoulder.  “Bloody hell!” He motioned to a bobby awkwardly holding an IV bag, the line having already been inserted.  “Has he been stabilized?”

The copper nodded, and Owen began his own examination.  Ianto could smell the coppery tang of blood and stepped aside to let Owen work, knowing that the man’s chances had improved now that their own medic was on the case.  Yes, he and Owen sniped at each other, but the dragon respected the hell out of him.

“Owen,” Jack ordered, in full captain mode, “go with him to the hospital.  See if he’s able to tell us anything.  While you’re there, check on the husband and wife and get their stories.”

“You got it.”

“Ianto,” Jack continued, “why don’t you go and sweet talk the local constabulary while Tosh and I check out the scene.”

Ianto nodded, peeling off from the team.  He watched as Jack and Toshiko headed into the building, then turned to locate the reason they’d been pulled out of their beds in the middle of the night.

Andy Davidson stood at one of the barricades, and the dragon strode toward him, smiling as the PC noticed him approaching.  “PC Davidson,” Ianto greeted.

“Mr. Jones.”  Andy returned the smile.  Ianto hadn’t really been familiar with the constable before Gwen had joined Torchwood, and Kathy had nothing but good things to say about the young man.

“I hear congratulations are in order.”

Andy looked surprised.  “What do you mean?”

“I understand you’ve taken the detective’s exam.” 

He looked confused for a second, and then nodded.  “DI Swanson tell you, then?”

 “She did.”  Ianto didn’t add that Kathy was hoping to be assigned as Andy’s training officer, she was that impressed by him.  She’d confided that she really hadn’t paid much attention to the PC until after Gwen’s leaving, but then she’d seen just what a good investigator he was.  Of course, Kathy had confessed that it was because of Gwen that she hadn’t really gotten to know Andy, and she felt somewhat guilty for it.  She’d come to feel that Andy would be an excellent detective, now that he was out of the brash Gwen Cooper’s shadow.

“Yeah, well we’ll see.  There’ll be a lot of training involved, but it’s something I want to do.”  Andy looked at him sideways.  “You don’t happen to know something I don’t, do you?”

Ianto chuckled.  “I assure you, Constable, that I’m as in the dark as you about the outcome of the test.”  He glanced up at the building.  “Can you tell me why you though an attempted home invasion is something Torchwood would be interested in?”  He’d caught what had been in the CRIMINT report, but wanted to get it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

“I’ll trade information for coffee.”

The dragon shook his head in amusement.  “Why did I think you would say that?” 

“It doesn’t take a detective to notice the flask you’re carrying, does it?”

Ianto thought he really needed to get to know Andy Davidson better.  The man had a sense of humour that the dragon could understand.  “Very well,” he answered, unscrewing the cap of the insulated flask he’d brought with him just for this purpose…minus the Retcon, of course.  That particular flask was still in the SUV, just in case.  “With those superior observational skills, you’ll be a detective in no time at all.”

Andy smirked as he accepted the flask’s lid, filled with hot coffee.  He took a sip, and sighed.  “Are there any openings in Torchwood?  ‘Cause I’d come to work for Himself if it meant getting coffee like this all the time.”

“Information, please,” Ianto answered mildly.  He wondered if the constable had what it took to work for Torchwood, and thought to bring it up to Jack.  Perhaps it was time to start expanding the team…

“Yeah, business before pleasure.”  Andy took a sip, looking as if he were gathering his thoughts.   “We got a call from the wife, about burglars in the house.  Me and my partner were called out, and what we found…one victim, dead of multiple stab wounds, but there wasn’t a knife anywhere in the room.  The only weapon we found was a cricket bat on the floor.”

He took another drink of coffee.  “Then there was the bloke who got thrown through the window.  Now, the husband was unconscious and the wife was cowering in the corner, in shock and covered in blood.  There was no way she could’ve tossed anyone out of the window, ‘cause I doubt she weighs any more than your Japanese friend.”

“When your life is in danger, you’d be surprised what someone could do.”

“Nah, I’ve seen too much on this job.  And, believe me, no matter how scared she was, Mrs. Halloran just isn’t capable of that sort of thing.  Plus, she says she didn’t do it, and I believe her.”

Ianto could feel his curiosity building.  “Sounds like the classic ‘locked room’ murder.”

Andy nodded.  “None of the neighbors heard or saw anything…no big surprise, there.  Oh, and then after the fact we were told about the creepiness of the call the wife placed to the police.”  He shuddered dramatically.  “Apparently the only voices screaming on the thing were male.”

 “It had to have been either the husband or wife,” Ianto pointed out logically.  Of course, in his line of work it could have been anything _but_ that, but he was curious about how Andy would answer.

“Yeah, maybe.  But I don’t buy it.  There’s too much weirdness in this for that, which is why I called you in.  Something about the scene just screamed ‘spooky do’ at me and I’ve learned not to ignore my instincts.”

Ianto thought that Andy would make an excellent detective, especially in a place as spatially and temporally unstable as Cardiff.  It seemed he had a good intuition for the job.  “Well, we’ll certainly take a look at the scene and let you know.”

He could hear Jack suddenly chattering in his ear, and he didn’t react.  _“Yeah, this is really strange,”_ his mate said.  _“Even if this wasn’t one of ours, I’d still want to know what happened in this flat.  Tell your friend out there that we’ll be taking over.”_

Ianto poured Andy a little more coffee.  “Looks like we’re going to be investigating this ourselves.”

“One of those talky things in your ear, huh?  Well, I’m not surprised, since you blokes have some of the best toys.” Andy drained the small cup and handed it back.  “I’ll let the lead detective on site know.  Oh, and thanks for not stomping in and just taking over like the Captain usually does.  We poor working sods appreciate the courtesy…and the coffee, of course.”  With a nod, Andy walked away in order to find the officer in charge. 

Ianto sensed Jack getting closer, and he turned in time to see his mate and Toshiko exiting the building.  The dragon headed over to join them.  Jack was looking somewhat pensive.  “There was nothing in that room to tell us anything,” he groused. 

“Except for the lack of murder weapon and a lot of blood,” Toshiko corrected.  “And the window had definitely been broken outward, so that burglar had gone through it with a bit of force.”

“Andy says that the wife isn’t physically imposing,” Ianto reported, “and doubts she has it in her to toss someone bigger than her through plate glass.” 

Jack touched the comm. in his ear.  “Owen, anything?”

_“I’ve left the burglar with the trauma people, they’re best to handle his injuries,”_ the medic answered.  _“I’m gonna see about the husband and I’ll get back with you as soon as I have anything.”_

“Keep us informed.”  Jack toggled off his comm.  “Okay, we have a bit of a mystery on our hands.  Ianto, I want everything you can dig up on the happy couple, as well as the would-be thieves.  I want to know if the Hallorans were targeted for some reason, or if this was just random.   Toshiko, you go over the readings you got from the flat.  See if there’s anything weird up there that might give us some sort of idea as to what happened.”

“There were some odd electromagnetic signatures,” the technician mused.  “I don’t know what it means yet, but I’ll get on that when we get back to the Hub.”

“I hate to say this,” the dragon said, somewhat delicately, “but Gwen might be the best person to talk to the Hallorans.  She can put her so-called compassion to good use.” He let just a hint of his natural sarcasm leak through.  “Owen has the bedside manner of a Weevil in heat.”

Jack frowned.  Just after the original phone call they’d received back at the house, he’d asked Jack if he’d wanted to call Gwen in as well, but his mate had said no, still irritated by what Owen had told them earlier in the evening.  And, while Ianto might not have thought much about the way she was prone to treating her teammates, Gwen did have a certain rapport with normal people, and Jack had to concede that, even though the dragon knew his mate really didn’t want to.

Finally, Jack sighed. “You’re right.  Gwen would be the best person to interview the husband and wife.  I’ll call her in and send her to the hospital.  But I’m going to warn Owen to keep an eye on her.  The moment she shows any of sort of condescending behaviour, she goes on Hub duty.  I’m on my last nerve with her.”

Toshiko was looking at both Ianto and Jack, her face curious and concerned at the same time.  “Has something happened?” she asked.

Jack ran his hand through his hair, tugging at the strands in frustration.  “You could say that, yes.  It turns out she had a confrontation with the other-dimensional Ianto, and Owen witnessed it.”

“Thank God he did,” she replied.  “But why?  The other Ianto was nice.  He was different from our Ianto, but not so much that you could hold it against him.  He was in a place that was confusing to him.  He didn’t need to be confronted by anyone, let alone Gwen.”

This is one of the many reasons Ianto loved Toshiko.  While she had a very healthy skepticism concerning the unknown, once a person proved themselves to her, she accepted them.  Certainly it had gotten her into trouble in the past, but Ianto would never have her change.  “Yes, but him being not so different from me was what she most likely held against him.”

“I couldn’t help but see she wasn’t happy with him being there, but honestly…he was lost!  That should have been the first priority for her once he’d explained himself.”

“But you know that’s how Gwen is,” Jack sighed. 

“Jack,” Toshiko murmured, stepping a bit closer, “perhaps it would have been different if she’d been around during that Year.  She hasn’t grown the way the rest of us have.  I think we’ve all simply left her in the dust, so to speak.  I know you want to give her a chance to prove herself, but maybe it’s time to let her go.  I hate the idea of being a team member down…”

“This is her last chance,” Jack said softly.  “If she doesn’t put her best foot forward on this, even if it turns out this isn’t a Torchwood case, then she’s on Hub duty permanently.  She knows her way around the system enough to act as a coordinator for the outside team.  And, if she manages to mess that up…then yes, I think it would be time to consider Retcon.”

“The only problem is,” Ianto added, “is that Gwen has now been with Torchwood long enough that such a large gap in memories could be the very thing that might trigger everything in coming back.  Also…I want to meet Rhys.”

Toshiko’s eyes widened.  “You think he might be Torchwood material?”

“I’ve no idea.  But I’m hoping he might at least be able to rein Gwen in, if he’s trustworthy enough to be brought into the circle of loved ones who are even just slightly involved.”

“Look,” Jack interrupted, “this is all fine and dandy, but we have a murder to try to solve.  I’m going to get Gwen up and to the hospital to meet Owen.  I want her to question the Hallorans, and Owen to sit on that other burglar until we can get something out of him.”

He stepped away, pulling his mobile out.  Ianto watched him, frowning.  He knew how much this issue with Gwen was getting to his mate, and he was beginning to suspect that Jack was considering more than just losing what could be a decent field agent. 

Gwen had been the first person Jack had hired on his own since Suzie had been kept after they’d evicted the others from Torchwood One forcefully from the Hub when they’d taken over.  And what had happened to Suzie…well, Jack might not have come out and said it, but the dragon was beginning to guess what his mate could be thinking: that he was a failure, and that Torchwood was suffering from his bad decisions when it came to personnel. 

Ianto wished he could reassure Jack that wasn’t the case, since it had been his mate to have found Owen and he’d worked out brilliantly, but the dragon also knew that his mate’s confidence had taken a big hit from the Doctor’s attitude toward him as well.  He really didn’t think Jack would accept anything except from what he worked out on his own.  And Ianto knew when to pick his battles.

“Tosh,” he said, turning back to the technician, “let’s not bring up Gwen again, at least not in this context, all right?  We all know there are issues but it’s up to Jack to decide what to do about her.”

Toshiko nodded, accepting the mild rebuke.  “Okay.  But you know I’m right…the four of us have had too many things happen to us, and it’s brought us all closer.  Gwen’s on the outside, looking in…and she doesn’t even realise it.  I’m not trying to justify her behaviour – she had absolutely no right to treat your counterpart with anything but compassion and respect – but there’s such a gulf between us now, I just don’t see how she can possibly fit in anymore.  And, before you say anything, yes I know we had problems before the Toclafane, but she was actually starting to fit in.  I can’t help wondering if her changes in attitude have more to do with what she doesn’t know, than what she does.”

“Perhaps part of it,” Ianto conceded, “but that doesn’t explain her attitude beforehand.”  He glanced back over to his mate, who looked as resigned as he’d ever seen him.  “We’ll work it out.  Now, we have a job to do.”

Toshiko nodded, although the expression on her face told Ianto that she wanted to continue their conversation.  At least she recognized the subject dismissal for what it was.  “You’re right, of course.  Finding out what happened is more important right now.” 

Ianto was glad that she was dropping it, but he knew this was far from over.  He only hoped that Gwen wouldn’t distract from what they needed to do…even if she wasn’t around.


	3. Chapter 3

 

**_29 June 2008_ **

****

Ianto was frustrated.

He sat at his station, staring at the screen as he researched the burglary victims, Mike and Beth Halloran. 

They were blaringly _normal_.  They’d both led relatively boring lives. 

And yet, one of them had to have been the one who’d killed one burglar and put the other in critical condition.

“You don’t look happy.”

He turned to regard Jack.  His mate stood just behind him, hands in his trouser pockets.  “The Hallorans are so clean they’d most likely squeak if you rubbed them the right way.”

He could tell Jack was barely hiding a smirk.   “I’ll squeak no matter how you rub _me_.”

The dragon rolled his eyes affectionately.  “You know damned well that wasn’t what I meant.”

Jack winked.  “I take it you found nothing in their background at all?”

“Mike Halloran has had a couple of traffic tickets that he paid promptly, but that’s it.”

“I just have this feeling…” Jack trailed off, looking pensive.  “There’s something going on here that we can’t see.  I’d say I was willing to bet my life on it –“

“Don’t even joke about that,” Ianto snapped, glaring.  As much as he was looking forward to eternity with his mate, he hated the idea of Jack ever being in pain enough to die.

Jack moved forward, putting his arm around Ianto’s shoulders and squeezing.  “If I can’t joke about it, then what’s the point?”

The dragon knew that was true, but it didn’t make him feel any better about it. 

“I was just going to check in with Toshiko about those odd readings she got,” Jack went on.  “I also heard from Owen, and he said that Gwen’s been talking to the Hallorans and hasn’t been able to get much.  Beth doesn’t remember a thing that happened, and Mike was unconscious at the time.”

“You’re still thinking that one of them was responsible.”  It wasn’t a question.

Jack quirked an eyebrow at him.  “And you don’t?”

“The only other explanation would be that someone arrived in the nick of time to save the couple from the burglars and then vanished without a trace, which seems highly unlikely.”

“Unless either one has some sort of guardian angel…and I don’t believe in angels.”  Jack paused.  “Well, unless you count the Weeping Angels, and I wouldn’t want to meet one of those…ever.”

Ianto nodded.  There were records on the Quantum Angels in the Archives, and from what he’d read he had no desire to ever see one, either.  “And I doubt they’d want to help the Hallorans, anyway.”

“Exactly.”  Jack stepped away, and Ianto immediately missed his mate’s arm around him.  “Toshiko!” he called out turning toward their friend, “please tell me you have something.”

Toshiko spun in her chair.  “I wish I could.  I picked up some odd electromagnetic readings, but they were too weak to get any other information.  I’m not at all certain what caused them, but it had to have been some sort of technology.”

“A leaking microwave?” Ianto suggested.

“Wrong kind of energy.”  The tech slumped, rubbing her eyes.  “Besides, anything coming from a microwave would have dissipated long before reaching the bedroom.  No, this is bog-standard electromagnetic energy. The only thing keeping me from dismissing it as natural is how much there is of it.”

“Owen says the burglar in the hospital was stabbed with a long, thin blade,” Jack said.  “And there was nothing like that in the bedroom.  I’m open to guesses as to where it went.”

“Perhaps that’s where the electromagnetism came from,” Toshiko mused.  “Somehow that energy was created when the weapon was disposed of.”

“That would most likely mean alien tech,” Ianto answered, “which does put this case firmly into Torchwood jurisdiction.”

 “I never doubted that it wasn’t,” Jack said. 

The dragon raised an eyebrow.  “Never?”

“Well, almost never.”  Jack gave him a grin.  “There was this part of me that wanted to solve a true, locked door mystery.”

Jack’s phone suddenly rang, and he pulled it from his pocket.  “Yes, Owen?” he answered. 

Ianto kept his eyes on his mate as Jack listened to Owen’s report.  Jack was quiet, until he finally said, “Bring her in.”  Then he snapped the phone shut, regarding Ianto and Toshiko.  “The second burglar has died, but not before he begged Gwen to keep ‘the woman in the flat’ away from him.”

“I’ll get the interrogation room ready.”  The dragon stood, and then headed down to prepare for whatever Beth Halloran turned out to be.

 

**********

 

Ianto hadn’t gotten too close a look at Beth Halloran, but he had to admit that there weren’t a lot of people who looked less like a killer than she did.

Owen and Gwen had brought her into the Hub through the garage entrance, a hood over her head and her hands cuffed in front of her.  Just from her body language Ianto could see that she was terrified, and he had to wonder at just how great an actress Beth was.  If he didn’t know better – and, honestly, he simply had his own instincts as well as Jack’s certainty that they were dealing with something not human, but the dragon was always willing to trust both – then Ianto would have thought that it was all a case of mistaken identity, and that she was an innocent bystander in all this.

Or she knew what Torchwood was and had figured out that they meant business when it came to aliens being on their territory.

Ianto took over on Gwen’s side as Jack did on Owen’s, and his teammate didn’t look happy about it.  He wondered what was going on in her head, and then dismissed the thought.  He was certain they’d hear from Gwen on the matter of Beth Halloran soon enough.

Together he and his mate escorted the woman to the interrogation room.  Ianto could feel her trembling in his grasp, and a part of him wanted to feel sorry for her…if it weren’t for two bodies in the morgue at the hospital.  He couldn’t blame her too much, but if she was a threat then they needed to know that.

There were enough peaceful aliens living around Cardiff.  He and Jack had found them homes amid the humans in the city, and they co-existed quite happily with the normal people around them.  Ianto knew that he and Jack would most likely send Beth home if she proved not to be a threat, and would then keep their eye on her and Mike for as long as needed.  But, if she was a danger, then they would have to take measures. 

He and Jack would follow the procedures that they’d set in place when they’d taken over, and act accordingly.

They sat Beth down in the hard metal chair and Jack snatched the bag off of her head.  Beth looked up at him, and then Ianto, her large dark eyes frightened.  Jack walked around the table, leaning his over the obviously terrified woman threateningly.  Ianto leaned against the wall, knowing his role in the interrogation.

“Tell me everything,” Jack snapped, threat evident in the order.

“Where am I?” Beth asked, her voice wavering.  “Where’s my husband?”

“He’s safe.”

“What do you mean, ‘safe’?  What have you done with him?”

“Nothing yet,” Jack said, pushing himself off the table.  “Tell me what happened in the flat, Beth.  It had to be either you or Mike, and I’m leaning toward you.  How did you do it?”

Beth was shaking her head, and Ianto couldn’t help but feel bad for her just a bit.  But he knew Jack had to be harsh, in order to get to the truth of the matter.  They had to know what had occurred, in order to decide what to do next.

“You can’t treat me like this!” Beth answered, suddenly defiant.  “I didn’t do anything wrong!  We were burgled…attacked!  I want a lawyer.  I want a phone call!  If you’re charging me with something –“

“We’re not charging you with anything,” Jack interrupted.  “We don’t have to.  There won’t be a lawyer, or a phone call.  There’ll be just us…in this room, as long as it takes.”  He was looming over Beth again, the threat back in his tone.

Ianto shivered slightly.  He couldn’t help it.  Jack was incredibly _hot_ when he was in interrogation mode.  Maybe he could suggest some role-play once this is over…

_Get it back on track, Jones._

“Now, tell me what happened!”  Jack slammed his palm down on the table, making Beth jump.

“I told the police!” she shouted.  “I told that woman!  I don’t know anything!”

Ianto was beginning to think she really didn’t know anything.  Even if she was responsible, Beth Halloran’s continued claims of ignorance seemed entirely genuine. 

However, that made the dragon wonder just _why_ she didn’t recall anything.

Ianto moved forward, bringing the file that he’d brought with him out from under his arm.  He had PC Davidson to thank for the comprehensive information on the crime scene, and he’d have to make Kathy aware of just how cooperative Andy had been.

He opened the file and brought out the photos from the scene of crime, including pictures of the criminal who’d died onsite and of the other laying on the crumpled roof of the police car.   “Look at them,” he urged, spreading them out across the table.  “The second burglar just died in hospital.  His last words were: ‘keep the woman in the flat away from me’.  Now, why would he say that?”

Ianto watched as Beth swallowed convulsively.  “I don’t know why he’d say that!  I swear I didn’t do anything!”

Jack looked at her shrewdly.  “Was it Mike?  Are you covering for him?”

“No!”  Beth screamed.

The one of the overhead lights blew out.  The others flickered violently.

Jack didn’t even look up.

Ianto’s heart rate jumped, but he remained calm.  “Those men attacked you.  You were only defending yourself.  Anyone would understand.”  He was lying, to an extent; the law allowed for self-defence, but he also knew that what had happened to those burglars could be considered excessive force.  If Beth was human and had to face ephemeral justice, it was possible that she’d still get prison time.  It would almost be better if she _was_ an alien at this point, because then he and Jack could work to protect her.

“I promise,” she cried, “I don’t know anything!  I just know it wasn’t me!  Please, let me go!”

Jack didn’t say anything.  Instead, he left the room, and Ianto followed him, feeling sorry for the woman who seemed about to break down into sobs handcuffed to the table.  He was just behind Jack as his mate climbed the stairs up to the observation window, where Gwen was waiting.

“Did you have to be so harsh?” were the first words out of her mouth.

Jack frowned.  “She killed two men –“

“You don’t know that!”

“I’m certain she did.  She might not know exactly what happened, but she is responsible.”

“We need to know who she is,” Ianto added quietly, trying to avoid the confrontation that he knew was brewing between Gwen and Jack.  “Then we can help her.”

“Help her how?” Gwen snorted.  “By throwing her into a cell?”

“If that’s what it takes,” Jack growled. 

“And if she’s peaceful,” the dragon added, “and this was just self-defence, then we can help her and Mike with new lives. We’re not all about killing, and you know that.”

“You’re treating her like she’s a murderer,” Gwen snapped.  “Those men broke into her home.  Of course it was self-defence!”

“And you know the law about that.  Self-defence is all well and good, but what Beth did was excessive.  She could still be found guilty of some form of murder.”

“Ianto’s right,” Jack said.  “It’s best she come clean with us now, so we can help her if that’s what she needs.  And, if we have to get a bit rough to find out the truth, then so be it.”

Gwen’s eyes narrowed.  “Now who’s being excessive?”

It was a small movement, but Ianto saw Jack’s flinch.  The dragon wanted to step in front of Gwen and defend his mate, but knew that would only do more harm to Jack’s self-confidence than good.  He had to let him handle it; although Ianto did reach over and squeeze Jack’s hand in support.

“We’re doing what needs to be done,” Jack responded.  “We need to know if there’s a danger to innocents, and to do that we’re going to need to do whatever is needed.  If Beth Halloran constitutes a danger to the city or the planet, then we handle it.  Is that understood?”

“You’ve convicted her without facts,” Gwen argued back.

“But there is evidence,” Toshiko’s quiet voice broke into the discussion, and Ianto couldn’t have been happier for the interruption. 

They all turned toward the technician, who stood just beyond Gwen.  She looked put out, and the dragon could guess where that ire was aimed at.  “What do you have, Tosh?” Ianto asked.

“While you were questioning Beth,” she said, “there was a spike of electromagnetic energy coming from the interrogation cell.”

“The light blowing out,” Jack nodded. 

“Yes, it blew out the bulb.  And it came from Beth.  I’m still not sure why or what caused it, but it was definitely from her.”

“Thanks, Toshiko.”  Jack turned back to Gwen.  “There’s your proof.  Beth is probably an alien, and at this point, until we know any different, we’ll have to treat her as dangerous.”

“It doesn’t matter if she’s an alien,” Gwen pushed.  “It was self-defence.  She was protecting herself and the man she loves.”

Ianto narrowed his eyes at her.  “So…it doesn’t matter that Beth is an alien that killed two men…as long as she was doing it to help someone she loves?”

Gwen glared at him.  “She cannot be blamed for what happened.”

“So,” the dragon went on, “it’s fine for Beth – an unknown alien who won’t even admit what she is – to take lives in an effort to protect a loved one, but when it comes to your own teammate – who happens to be a dragon – is put into the same situation you hold it against him?”

Gwen took a step back, acting as it Ianto had just struck her.  “That’s completely different!”

“How is it different, Gwen?” The only thing that kept Ianto from moving closer was Jack’s hand on his shoulder.   “I was willing to do anything to save Lisa, until it came to the point where I knew I couldn’t help her any longer.  How is my willing to perform any act to save the only other of my kind I’d seen in centuries any different from Beth doing the same thing to save her husband?”

“Because you endangered m –“ Gwen stumbled, then went on, “you endangered the entire team by your actions.  It was a terrible situation and you brought it down on us.”

 “Oh, I see.”  Ianto could feel the anger building, but did nothing to stop it.  He now really understood what was keeping Gwen from even thinking about forgiving him for everything that had occurred, and why she was still holding it against him after all this time.  “It’s not the team’s lives in danger that you’re so upset about…it’s yours.  And here I thought it was because I damaged your pride by not trusting in you enough to admit that I was a dragon in the first place.  Although, I suspect that’s part of it as well…it’s fine as long as you have secrets, but not anyone else.”

“How dare you!” Gwen’s hand went up.

It would have connected if not for Toshiko’s quick reflexes.  The technician grabbed her by the wrist, keeping her from striking Ianto for his words.  “He’s right, you know,” she accused quietly.   “We’ve all seen it, but it hasn’t been until just now that the truth is finally out there.  What makes it worse is that you really weren’t in all that much danger.  Ianto was the one who was in trouble, not you.”

“Gwen,” Jack spoke, “I think you really need to consider how you interpret things around here.  Beth is an unknown quantity; she might be calm now, but there’s no telling what she’s capable of.  If anyone is the true danger in the Hub at this moment, it’s her.  Not Ianto, who would lay down his life for you without a second’s delay, even knowing how you feel about him.  You are his teammate, but more than that…you are one of his Named dragon-friends, which means that you are his family, and that he would protect you even if it meant he would die in the attempt.  Beth isn’t going to do that for you.  Hell, she’ll most likely kill you if she got the chance.”

“I never asked for Ianto to protect me,” Gwen answered sharply.

“That’s just it,” Owen added, joining the party, “you didn’t have to ask.  Dragon Boy is just like that.”

“Enough,” Jack ordered.  “Owen, I want you and Toshiko to run every test you can think of on our guest.  We need to know who and what she is.  Ianto, you bring Beth up from the interrogation room, and keep her under constant surveillance.  And Gwen…in my office.  We’re not done and I don’t want to have our dirty laundry aired in front of a possible enemy.   The last thing we need is to show we’re less than united before an alien combatant.”

Gwen looked as if she wanted to argue, but Jack simply pointed toward his office, and she spun on her heel and stormed across the Hub. 

“Jack –“ Ianto began.

“No, I know that you want to be there, but this is between Gwen and me.  It’s time I stepped up and accepted that I made a big mistake in hiring her.”  Jack took a deep breath.  “I need you three to do your jobs…the jobs I trust you with implicitly.”

Ianto wanted nothing more than to take this burden from Jack, but he knew he couldn’t.  This was up to his mate.  Jack had to deal with what had happened, and just as Jack trusted his team, then his team had to trust its leader to do what needed to be done.

Owen nodded at the order, heading back down to his domain to get ready for the tests.  Toshiko smiled, and followed him, passing by her desk to pick up some devices she would be using.

It left Ianto alone with his mate.

“Just us...in this room…as long as it takes?” he murmured, raising an eyebrow.  “Terrifying.”

Jack looked surprised at the change of subject.  “Really?”

“Absolutely.  Sent shivers down my spine.”  It really had; Jack had been incredibly sexy during the interrogation.

His mate side-eyed him.  “You don’t look scared.”

“It…passed.”  The dragon sent him a saucy wink.

Jack snorted, giving Ianto a disbelieving look.   “Just wait until later, and I’ll give you shivers.”

“I’ll be your willing interrogation subject anytime.”

Ianto could see the shadows that had been in Jack’s eyes fade at the quiet innuendo.  He felt he’d done his best to relax his mate, knowing that Jack would need to be calm when he faced Gwen. 

He pressed a light kiss to the corner of Jack’s mouth, and then turned and headed down to the interrogation room in order to collect Beth Halloran.


	4. Chapter 4

 

**_29 June 2008_ **

****

Gwen was waiting in his office when Jack arrived, standing in the middle of the room with her arms crossed over her chest, a belligerent expression on her face.  She looked ready to fight.

Jack said nothing.  He closed the door, and then headed around his desk, taking his seat.  “Please sit down,” he said calmly. 

Ianto’s teasing had eased Jack’s anger, but it was still bubbling beneath the surface of his thoughts, ready to explode if Gwen said the wrong thing.

He fully expected she would.

“I’d rather stand,” she answered.

“And I’d rather you sit.  Don’t make me make it an order, Gwen.”  He paused.  “Not that you’d follow it anyway.”

He stared up at her, meeting her eyes squarely.  Gwen returned his gaze, trying to stare him down.  He wasn’t about to be intimidated by her, and he let her get on with it, hoping his disdain for the contest showed on his face. 

As they continued to stare, Jack couldn’t help but wonder what had gone wrong.  First Suzie, and now Gwen…they were the two he’d hired on his own, without input from Ianto, and both had turned out to be failures.  Of course, Suzie had been the worst, and he really should have expected it out of someone who’d been indoctrinated by One.  But Gwen?  There’d been nothing about her to warrant any sort of concern that things would turn out this badly.   He should have listened to Ianto, all that time ago, as they’d stood on the roof and talked about his hiring of her.  He wanted to cringe as he remembered trying to convince Ianto to let Gwen in on the truth of his being a dragon.  It seemed that Ianto had been correct about that, as well...not that he held that against the dragon.  He really didn’t, because it wasn’t Ianto’s fault for Jack’s own shortcomings.

What did that say about him as a leader?  Should he just step aside and let Ianto take over?  After all, he’d been able to get Gwen to straighten up while Jack had been with the Doctor.  Gwen had gone right back into old behaviour the moment Jack had reappeared. 

What did that say about him being any sort of judge of character?

Finally, after about thirty seconds, Gwen gave in and took the offered seat.

“Thank you.  Now, you have one minute to give me a valid reason for your actions.” He reached into his pocket for Ianto’s stopwatch, pushing the button to start it running.  “Go.”

Gwen looked surprised, and didn’t say anything.   Jack took perverse pleasure in stunning her speechless.

He glanced down at the stopwatch.  “Fifty-five seconds.”

Finally, she managed to say, “You can’t be serious!”

“I’m very serious.  Fifty seconds.”

“I don’t see why I have to defend myself.”

“Because you’re the one at fault.  Forty-five seconds.”

“How am I the one at fault?”

“Because you’re the one who won’t see the situation for what it is.  Forty seconds.”

“What I see,” she fumed, “is a team who refuses to admit that trusting someone not human, and yet can pass for human, is a bad idea.”

“Ianto has been with Torchwood for nearly eight years.  He has saved countless lives, including those on this team numerous times.  Tell me why trusting him is not a good thing.  Thirty seconds.”

“He brought a threat into the Hub and put the entire world in danger.”

“He brought an injured being into the Hub, trying to find help for her.  When he couldn’t do that, he made certain that she wouldn’t be a danger to anyone, which broke his heart in the process.”  Not to mention making Jack finally see the truth of his relationship with the dragon, but it had been the only good to come out of what had happened with Lisa.  “I’m not hearing anything I haven’t heard already from you.  Twenty-five seconds.”

“Stop counting down!” Gwen’s face twisted in anger. 

“I’m just reminding you that you have a time limit to keep.  And that time is getting shorter the longer you retread old territory and argue with me.  Twenty seconds.”

“He has too much power within the team.  He deals with humans every day with no real reference to do so.  He’s a bloody dragon!”

“He has just the power I want him to have.  He’s lived over two thousand years around humans so he has plenty of reference.  And yes, he is a dragon…and his people were on this planet before humanity was.  Ten seconds.”

“You once told me that I was here to keep you human.  How can I do that if you continually let a non-human undermine my position?”

“I was wrong about that.  You’re not the one to keep me human.  I was already human, I’d just lost track of that humanity…until Ianto showed me where it was.  And your time is up.”  Jack picked up the stopwatch and clicked it off.   He looked at her again.  “Gwen, we have given you every chance.  I’ve been on your side until you showed that you were putting yourself above the team.  That’s when I realised hiring you had been a mistake, but Ianto was the one who wanted to get you on the correct training path.  He’s the one who went to bat for you, despite your attitude toward him.  And, when I was gone, he praised your new work ethic and was pleased with your progress.  Tell me, Gwen…tell me that’s not someone who believes in the team…who believes in you.”

“Right,” she scoffed.  “The only reason I was still with the team when you got back was because I decided it was best to play along!  I didn’t want to give Ianto any reason to get rid of me.”

Jack frowned.  “You mean to say that you only followed Ianto’s orders because you didn’t want to be fired?”

“Yeah, of course.  Someone had to keep an eye on him, and since you bunked off with the Doctor it fell to me to make certain the team ran smoothly.   Leaving him in charge was a huge mistake, Jack.”

He could feel the anger building back.  This little girl was telling him that the only reason she’d gotten better at her job was to keep Ianto from firing her, so she could stay around and spy on things.  It put an entirely new perspective on his own thoughts of whether he should step down from the leadership of Torchwood.  The elation from the knowledge that he wasn’t the failure he thought he’d been mixed with the fury and it clarified his arguments.  “No, it wasn’t,” he said, defending his mate – and himself – from Gwen’s accusations.  “But I see that keeping you around is, if you truly think you’re the reason this team runs as well as it does.  If anything, your presence has become a distraction, and it’s going to get someone killed if you don’t straighten up and start acting like you actually care for this team.”

“I do care!”

“No, you don’t.”  He steepled his fingers, regarding her with narrowed eyes.  “You’ve proven that your compassion doesn’t include your teammates, the ones that you should care the most about.  They’re the ones who hold your very life in their hands, just as you do for them.  How can they – and I – trust you to look out for all if you won’t do the same for one?”

“Well, everyone keeps saying that Ianto is pretty much invincible.  He can look after himself.”

Jack could feel his anger morph into sheer fury, although his mind was still quite clear.  “Yes, Ianto is extremely tough…but he can still be hurt if hit in the right place.  He can take a lot of damage but when he goes down, he goes down hard.”  He’d seen that happen only twice; once soon after Toshiko had joined the team, and the second when Blils Manger had attempted to use a stun gun on the dragon.  That first time had been the catalyst of their hiring Owen.  “You’d let a teammate be so critically injured that he’d become helpless against any threat that happens to be close by?” 

Gwen snorted.  “He’s the one who’s going on about protecting everyone because of some weird sort of vow he took.  And, as I said, I didn’t ask him to.”

“You didn’t have to…because he actually cares about you, Goddess knows why.  And that’s the difference between you and him.  He doesn’t have to pretend compassion; he shows it in everything he does for this team, be it getting you that cup of coffee when you most need it, to going head-to-head with the Fae to make certain they don’t destroy you because you can’t let a case go when I tell you to.  You put your own agenda first, and your teammates – and the world – second, and I’m certain you’ll just keep on doing it until it gets someone killed.”

 “I don’t have an agenda!” Gwen argued.  “I want us to do what’s right!  Giving into the fairies had been the wrong decision, and you made it just because Ianto told you that there wasn’t anything that could be done, and you believed him.  The others are just as bad!  He preaches about magic and destiny and spirits and Tosh and Owen eat it up with a spoon.  You and I both know there’s no such thing as magic, Jack.  The fairies weren’t magic…they were just another alien lifeform that came to Earth to mess with us.   Giving into their demands was a mistake, one that’s going to come back and bite us if we’re not careful.”

Jack narrowed his eyes, glaring at her with all the fury within him.  The problem was she was partially correct.  For as long as he could remember Jack hadn’t believed in magic.  He’d come from the future, where everything was science and magic just didn’t exist. 

But he’d seen it.  He’d seen the Great Dragons, and Ddraig Llyn, and the Dragon-Friends and his own daughter come into her down because of magic.  Ianto himself was as magical as anyone could get anymore, and Jack couldn’t explain it away like he’d tried to back at the beginning of their partnership.  He’d tried; oh, he’d tried to make things fit into his own preconceived notions, invoking Clarke’s Law and alien interference back in the far past – those ancient alien websites were more correct than even they knew.  There were examples of just such interference if one knew where to look, and Jack had been convinced that that was what had created the race of dragons.

He’d been wrong.  He knew that now, even if magic was still something he struggled with.  But he was trying to learn, and Ianto, the Great Dragons, and the Dragon-Friends and Estelle were all willing to teach him what he didn’t know. 

To hear Gwen spouting his own rhetoric back at him, even unconsciously, was a bit galling.

“You’re wrong, Gwen,” he answered, a small part of him realising just how ironic it was that he was now defending the existence of magic.  “There are things out there in the world – in the Universe – that we simply don’t understand.  Magic is one of those things –“

“You’re joking!”

“I’m not.  And see, this is another issue I have with you: you’re mind is closed against even the possibility of new things.  You’re so willing to dismiss magic as nonsense instead of embracing something special about this world.  Answer me honestly, Gwen.  How do you know magic doesn’t exist?”

“How do you know it does?” she turned the question back on him angrily.

“Because I see it every day.  I see it in Ianto, and in Toshiko, Kathy Swanson, in people who are special to me.  I see it in my family.”  Jack knew this was the first time he was admitting this out loud, and it felt so right, as if he were finally coming to grips with a part of himself he’d never known was there.  “I see it acting in my own life and am grateful for it every day.  So don’t tell me magic doesn’t exist, because it does.”

“Your family?” Gwen’s eyes were wide with surprise.  “You have family?”

 Jack barely resisted rolling his eyes at her.  Was that the only thing she’d heard in his little speech?  Knowing Gwen…yes, it was, because it was yet another secret she hadn’t known.  “Yes, I have family outside Torchwood, not that it’s any of your business.  What we’re discussing here is your lack of belief in something that should be second nature to you by now.  Instead, you’re dismissing it as so much bullshit.  That sort of attitude will get you killed.”

“No,” she argued, “what will get me killed is the sheer amount of secrets around this place.  What if one of these secrets come back to haunt us?  I do recall a certain ex of yours trying to murder us!”

“I don’t want to hear a lecture about secrets from you, Gwen Cooper!  Who was the one who Retconned her own boyfriend – the man she swears she loves and is going to marry – because of her affair?  Have you admitted it to him yet, without benefit of memory-altering drugs?”

Gwen’s face flushed, and she looked as if she was trying to say something but couldn’t get it out.  He took the opportunity and moved the subject on since what had happened with Rhys and the Retcon had already been addressed.  “While we have a chance, I also wanted to bring up your treatment of the doppelganger Ianto Jones that had been sent here by tech that _you_ touched.”

The anger left her face, and in its place was an attempt at innocence.  “You’ve already said your peace about that.”

“About you messing with unknown tech, yes.  But your little rant to the other Ianto was overheard, Gwen.  He was trapped here, and you couldn’t be bothered to show him the least little bit of compassion.”

“You really believed what he was saying?” she demanded.  “We had no idea if he was a threat or not.  In fact, we should have treated him the same way you’re treating Beth Halloran…handcuffed, and down in interrogation.  We had no idea where he’d come from, and what he was up to.  He could have killed us all after you’d calmly fed him lunch and passed along happy stories!”

“I see.  So you think we should be treating Beth Halloran the same way?  With sandwiches and coffee?”

“You can’t have it both ways, Jack.  Treating one differently from the other is hypocritical.”

‘You’re wrong there, Gwen.  That other Ianto hadn’t hurt anyone, and in fact proved to be relatively harmless.  We had no reason to lock him up.   Beth is an unknown factor who has most likely killed two men…even if it was in defence of herself and her husband, we still don’t know how she did it. We have evidence she is a viable threat to people around her, and we will treat her as such until we get proof otherwise.  Besides, from what I understand that the reason you decided to have your little ‘talk’ with him was something about how ‘all Iantos were inhuman and couldn’t be trusted’ I believe was the wording.  So, you see I know exactly what happened.”  He hadn’t had a chance to go back through the CCTV footage from that day, but he trusted Owen to recall it near perfectly.

“Personally,” he went on before she could even try to rebut the accusation, “that sounds pretty xenophobic to me.”  The TARDIS Ianto had said the same thing, and Jack had disregarded it.  Now he wished he could apologize to the other Ianto for it.  “This is something we cannot have in Torchwood.  It goes back to keeping an open mind about the unknown, and your inability to do that –“

His comm. sounded in his ear, interrupting what would have most likely become a tirade.  Jack toggled it on.  “Can it wait?”

_“No, Jack,”_ Ianto’s voice answered.  _“You need to come down to the Autopsy Bay immediately.  It’s about Beth.”_

Jack stifled his sigh.   “I’m on my way.”  He switched it off, turning back to Gwen.  “We’re not done here, not by a long shot.  You need to think about your place here, and whether you want to keep it.”  He stood up.  “Now, we have work to do.  I suggest you keep your opinions to yourself and follow orders.”

“I won’t do that, Jack.  You can’t ask me to do that!”

“I can, and I have.  Despite what you think, you’re a member of this team.  You need to start acting like it.” 

With those parting words, Jack left the office, not even bothered if Gwen followed or not.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

**_29 June 2008_ **

****

Ianto left Jack and headed down to the interrogation room where they’d left Beth.  He wished he could be there with his mate when he confronted Gwen, but he knew this was something that Jack had to do on his own. 

It wasn’t that he disliked Gwen; he honestly didn’t.  But Ianto just didn’t know how to take her moods and her accusations.  Things had calmed down when Jack had been gone, but now…it was just as bad as before.  He only hoped Jack could make her see reason.  And, if not, then of course there was demotion or termination. 

Ianto was personally going for demotion, and not because he really wanted Gwen around anymore.  It was because they’d have to take so much of her memory to let her go now, and there were enough people out there who knew she’d gone to work for ‘special ops’ that, at some point, it was almost a foregone conclusion that she’d somehow regain what she’d lost.  Of course, he’d help set up any sort of background that would be required, but then there was Rhys…it would almost be better if he somehow knew about Torchwood; knew what to look for if Gwen began remembering.  In the dimension he’d visited that had been Rhys Williams’ actual job with Torchwood, but then that other Gwen had been somewhat touched.  Their Gwen wasn’t, though she still had a host of issues that would have to be taken into consideration. 

They would need someone to watch her if Retcon was the choice made…and the best person for that would be Rhys.

It was paramount that Ianto meet with the man now.

He glanced down into the interrogation room from the high window.  Beth was still there, sitting in the chair, her head down and every line of her body reading defeat.

His mother had been fond of telling a young Ianto to follow his heart, and it would never lie to him.  He’d learned the hard way that she’d been correct; everything to do with Lisa and Jack had taught him that to ignore his feelings was to court disaster.  He’d not paid any attention them, and had tried to save a psychotic dragon and had almost lost his mate.

He was getting very conflicted feelings about Beth Halloran.

Taking her on face value, Ianto would never have thought that she could be responsible for the deaths of two men.  It was obvious that she was exactly how she looked: a distraught young woman who had been thrust into a situation she couldn’t understand.  He believed that outer appearance implicitly; he almost couldn’t help it.

But there was something within Beth Halloran that wasn’t…right.  Ianto didn’t know what it was, but it was there, hidden away, and he could swear it was waiting for its moment to pounce.  He was also certain that Beth had no idea of this, which made his impressions all the more confusing. 

Ianto had no doubt that she’d killed those two criminals, and she’d done it from a true need to defend herself, her husband, and her home.  But how she’d done it, and not recall the events…if it were some sort of chemical memory blocker, Owen would be able to find out. 

He was firmly convinced that she wasn’t lying when she claimed not to know anything.

However, that didn’t make her any less a danger.  They simply needed to know just how much of a threat she was, and if they would need to contain her.  Jack had been correct; Beth Halloran was an unknown quantity, one that they would need to assess in order to discover just what would need to be done.

Ianto took the steps down into the room. At his approach Beth raised her head, looking at him with large, frightened eyes.  “Are you coming to let me go?” she asked, her voice quavering.

“I’m afraid not.”  He leaned against the table, examining her closely.  She looked exhausted, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy and her lips irritated where she’d obviously been biting them.  There was nothing even remotely threatening about her in that moment, and Ianto couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for her.

“Beth, I know you have no idea who I am, but I swear to you now that I will not lie to you, no matter what.”  Ianto had no idea where this vow had come from, but the moment he spoke it he knew he’d meant it.  He felt she deserved to know what was going to happen to her, the bad or the good. 

“How do I know you’re not lying now?” she tried to joke, but it fell flat.

He gave her a soft smile.  “You don’t.  But I want to be honest with you.”

“All right.  I’ll believe you.  Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.  And my name is Ianto.”

“That’s a nice Welsh name.”

His smile widened.  “I have been told that I’m a nice Welsh boy.”  He didn’t add that, technically, he wasn’t Welsh and he wasn’t a boy.

Beth sighed.  “Except for the kidnapping me from the hospital and holding me against my will part.”

Ianto lost his smile.  “If it helps, I believe you when you say you don’t remember anything.”

“Then why keep me here?”

“Because there’s something else going on here, Beth.  During the earlier questioning, when you became upset you emitted a pulse of electromagnetic energy that blew the light bulb overhead.”

Beth’s face went grey.  “That was me?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“But how?”

“We don’t know,” Ianto admitted.  “But we want to run some tests to find out how.”

“What sort of tests?”

“Scans, blood work, things like that.”

“And…if you find out I’m…” she choked out a laugh.  “Oh God, I can’t believe I’m buying into this alien shit!”  She looked as if she wanted to cry again.

“One of two things,” he said, taking the seat opposite her. “If, after our tests, we discover that you’re an innocent in all this, then we let you go back to Mike.  We’ve helped stranded aliens before, and we have certain procedures, so as long as you follow a set of rules we leave you alone.  We’ll also support you and Mike if anything happens that has to do with your race…that is, if you prove to be a benign alien.”

 At this point, Ianto was leaning toward that being the case.  There had been cases where aliens had arrived on Earth as children and were taken in by human families, and grew up without knowing anything about their true heritage.  Since Beth didn’t seem to recall being different, that could very well be what happened.

And yet…

As much as Ianto wanted to believe her, there was still something niggling at the back of his mind, and he couldn’t dismiss it.  Beth had been able to overpower two grown men, and had killed them both even if it had been self-defence.  Chances were a peaceful race wouldn’t have the tools to defend themselves like that.

The weapon hadn’t been found, which was an issue with Ianto’s belief in Beth’s passive façade.  Where had it gone? Where had she even gotten it from to begin with?

There were just too many questions right now to even try to make any sort of educated guess.

“And…” Beth swallowed hard.  “And if I don’t?”

“Then, it’s containment.  In whatever way we can.”  He leaned over toward her, putting his hand on hers.  She flinched slightly, and Ianto knew immediately that it was his slightly warmer than human hand that had caused it.  “We would need to protect any innocent people that you might hurt.”

A single tear tracked down Beth’s cheek.  She nodded convulsively.  “I…I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone.”  She looked him straight in the eye, and the dragon’s heart constricted at the obvious distress in her gaze.  “I really killed those men, didn’t I?”

“We’re pretty certain, yes.”

“But why don’t I remember doing it?  You’d think I’d…” She scrubbed a hand across her face.   “I should know if I killed somebody, right?”

Ianto sighed.  “That’s what we also need to find out.  If there was something chemical that caused the holes in your memory, then chances are you’ll get them back eventually.  But, if it’s a part of an alien biology we don’t know, then we really have no idea.”

“But how could I be a friendly…alien…if what I did was wiped from my mind?”

“If your race was conditioned not to kill, and you did, it could be psychological.”  It had happened to him, in the wake of his family’s murder, and it had been years before he’d fully recovered those memories outside the nightmares that, even now, still haunted him occasionally.

“But why wouldn’t I know if I was someone else?”  Beth seemed to be getting more and more upset, but Ianto knew she needed all the answers he could give her.

“There are times when a being arrives on Earth and they’re too young to recall where they came from,” he explained.  “We had one case of a baby that was found by the police.  She was adopted by human parents, and grew up thinking she was their child…until she turned sixteen, and her race’s mating instinct took over and she tried to kill her boyfriend after their first time together.”

“What did you do?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“We managed to stop her.  All it took was a cocktail of hormones and herbs and she was fine.  The last time she checked in with us, she was still at University and studying to be a theoretical physicist.  As long as she continues taking that supplement the mating frenzy won’t come over her.  And, if there would come a time when it doesn’t work, then we’ll tweak it until it does.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she whispered.   

The dragon believed her. “We’ll figure this out,” Ianto said, confident that they would, indeed, work out where Beth was from.   “We have a great many resources we can use, plus there are some of the smartest people on this planet who will be working to do what we can to get to the bottom of this.”

Beth seemed to visibly screw up her courage.  She looked Ianto straight in the eye.  “Okay.  Let’s get these tests done.”  She held up her wrists, and the handcuffs jingled slightly with the movement.  “Do I have to keep these on?”

Ianto considered.  He knew that Jack would want them on until they determined whether Beth was a true threat, but he had this feeling that Beth would be all right for the time being.  “How about a compromise?  If you can wait until we get up to the medical bay, then we can take them off.”  He grinned slightly.  “This is only because I don’t have the key with me.  Otherwise I would remove them.”

That confession caused Beth to laugh, albeit weakly.  “What sort of place is this, that you don’t have a handcuff key handy when you need one?”

“Would you believe I left it at home?  My partner and I had the cuffs out the other night –“

The laughter got stronger, and it was worth Ianto embarrassing himself slightly with the story.   “Does the boss know you’re using company property as sexual aids?”

Ianto winked at her.  “He _is_ my boss.”

Beth’s jaw dropped.  “You mean…”  She shook her head.  “Well, he’s fit, I’ll give you that.  I can’t honestly say anything else nice about him though, after his questioning me.”

“He had to,” Ianto felt the need to defend his mate.  “He thought if he could provoke you, then you might slip and give something away.  It really was nothing personal.”  Besides, Jack had actually been rather easy on her; the dragon had seen him interrogate obvious threats before, and it hadn’t been pretty.  In fact, it had been fairly arousing, although he wasn’t about to admit that to her. “And he did, in a way…that light bulb that blew out?  That was you.”

Beth frowned.  “What…by using the power of my mind or something?”

“We don’t know, only that it was some sort of electromagnetic burst when you were at your most upset.  So you see, this is why we’re all convinced you’re not from Earth.  Human beings just can’t throw off energy pulses like that.”

“I really have no idea what that means,” Beth admitted. 

“Let’s get you upstairs and the scientist among us can explain.”  Ianto helped her to her feet.  “And maybe, after the tests, we can get you a cup of coffee or tea.”

“I would kill for a coffee.”  Then Beth seemed to realise what she’d said, and she stammered, “I mean…I didn’t mean…”

“I know,” he answered kindly.  He’d heard Owen say the same thing many times, and while he never took the saying at face value, knowing that Beth could, in fact, kill for a coffee…

He followed her up the narrow stairs, and then down the hallway toward the main Hub.  Beth’s jaw dropped when she got her first look at her surroundings.  “You people work here?”

“We do, yes.”  Ianto ushered her toward the Autopsy Bay, where he knew Owen and Toshiko were waiting.  He glanced toward Jack’s office, and could make out his mate at his desk, speaking to a seated Gwen.  She didn’t look happy, and the dragon wasn’t surprised by that.

“This is amazing!”  She looked around the Hub, and Ianto had to guide her when she stumbled from not paying attention to where she was walking. 

Myfanwy took that moment to let out a screech, and spiral around the water tower, her wings catching the warm updrafts from the Hub floor.  Beth gasped.  “Is that…?”

“A pteranodon, yes.”

“I think…I think I might actually be beginning to believe this alien thing.”  She sounded breathless.  “I suddenly feel very, very small.”

Ianto took her arm and led her toward the Autopsy Bay steps.  Toshiko and Owen were moving around the area, still preparing their instruments.  Beth came to a halt, staring warily at the high-tech equipment.

“It’s about time, Tea Boy,” Owen said, not even turning around.  Ianto was grateful that he remembered not to call him ‘Dragon Boy’ around their guest.  “Now, let’s get this show on the road.”

“Never mind him,” Ianto encouraged Beth as they made the rest of the way down.  “He’s a cranky bastard.”

“That’s _Doctor_ Cranky Bastard to you,” Owen sniped back, finally turning around.  “Now, let’s get you up on the table, shall we?  The sooner we get started, the sooner we’re done and the sooner I can get some coffee.”

“Oh, please,” Beth pleaded.  “I want to know what’s going on.”

Owen dug out his handcuff key – after teasing Ianto about not having his, which the dragon took good-naturedly – and removed the cuffs so Beth could climb up on the table easier.  “Now,” the medic said, “we’re gonna run a battery of tests to determine just where you come from, darlin’.  Tosh has some scanners that she’s gonna use while I get the blood and skin samples.”

“Ianto said you could explain about the electromagnetic thing,” Beth replied, looking at Toshiko.

The technician glanced at Ianto, and then back to Beth.  “As soon as I know more about it and why it’s happening, I’ll be glad to.”

The woman gave Toshiko a faint smile.  “Thank you.”

Toshiko nodded, and went back to her equipment.

“Now,” Owen went on, “let’s see if we can find a vein here…”  He lifted Beth’s arm gently – for him, proving that he wasn’t so big a prat after all – and felt around until he found what he was looking for.  Then he took a syringe and pressed the needle against her skin.

The need broke.

Owen frowned.  “What the…” He shook his head, and grabbed another syringe.

This needle broke as well.

Ianto glanced over Beth’s body to look at her arm.  It was unblemished.

“Try one of mine,” her murmured.  The dragon knew that needles had a hard time getting through his own tough skin, but that was also why Owen kept a special supply of syringes just for him available.

The medic stepped over to the cabinet, opening one of the drawers and taking out one of the stronger syringes and then heading back to the examination table.  He lifted Beth’s arm once more, positioning the needle.

The needle snapped.

“What’s going on?” Beth asked, starting to sound scared once more.

Ianto touched the comm. in his ear.  He didn’t even get to say anything before Jack was snapping, _“Can it wait?”_

The dragon barely hid the cringe.  Things must be going badly in his mate’s office.  “No, Jack.  You need to come to the Autopsy Bay immediately.  It’s about Beth.”

_“I’m on my way.”_ The unmistakable sound of Jack’s comm. switching off was almost like getting a phone slammed in his ear. 

Ianto had a feeling things were only going to get worse.

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

**_29 June 2008_ **

****

Jack strode toward the Autopsy Bay, entering and leaning on the railing overlooking the circular area.  His gaze took in the tableau: Ianto and Owen standing by the exam table, where Beth Halloran sat; and Toshiko, by the scanners that were taking readings of the woman as she was being physically examined. 

Beth wore an expression of horrified fascination, while Owen and Ianto were staring at each other as if they were having some sort of silent communication.  Toshiko looked just plain curious, as if she’d seen something she’d love to be able to explain but, at that moment, couldn’t.  Her eyes kept darting back to her instruments, and then back to Beth.

“What’s going on?” he asked, ignoring Gwen’s appearance by his side.

Ianto glanced up, giving Jack the full force of his concern.  “Owen can’t take any blood.  The needles keep breaking.”

Jack frowned.  “What about –“

“We even tried the special needles Owen keeps on hand for…” his voice faded, but Jack nodded, knowing what he was trying to say.  “They won’t penetrate her skin.”

“Just a sec,” Owen said, turning toward his tray of instruments.  Jack watched as he grabbed a scalpel, and without warning plunged it toward Beth’s exposed forearm. 

The woman barely had time to cry out before the scalpel rammed home…only to have the sharp tip break off and fall to the tile floor with a quiet clatter.

“When was the last time you were in hospital, Beth?” Owen asked, his voice sharp.

Beth was shaking her head.   “I don’t remember.  I don’t think I ever have been.  Oh God, it’s true, isn’t it?”  Her eyes went up to Ianto.  “I really am…” she swallowed, shaking her head in denial.

Ianto put his hand on her shoulder in a gesture of comfort. 

“Any operations?” Owen persisted.  “Check-ups?”

She simply kept shaking her head, her eyes getting wider and wider.  Jack knew the implications of what was going on were settling themselves in her brain, and she just didn’t want to believe it.

“When was the last time you fell ill?” Owen went on.  “Caught a cold?  Anything?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been sick.  But I take a lot of Vitamin C!”

Jack suddenly felt very bad for her.  Beth Halloran’s world was being turned upside down.  If there had been any doubt that she knew she was alien and had just been a really good liar, it was being wiped out by her reactions to what was going on around her.  No one was that good an actress.

“Hell of a lot then,” the medic muttered, dropping the broken scalpel back on the tray.

“Okay, Beth,” Jack said, knowing he had to bring it home for her, “you give out electromagnetic energy and we can’t penetrate your skin.  Now do you believe you’re an alien?”

“But I don’t remember!” she wailed.  “I want Mike!  I want to go home!” 

Ianto put his arm around her shoulders in a one-armed hug, and she leaned into him, accepting the support she obviously needed. 

Jack heard Gwen leave his side, and watched as she took the steps down into the Autopsy Bay and head over to the exam table.  She practically pushed Owen aside and stood in his place, taking Beth’s hand in hers.  He didn’t miss the glare that she sent toward Ianto, but the dragon paid it no attention, focused on comforting a near-hysterical Beth.

Ianto’s eyes found Jack’s, and he could see the determination in them to help Beth.  Jack nodded slightly, letting his mate know that he agreed with him, but they needed to find out just what Beth was in order to do that. 

“I don’t know anything about my skin or that other stuff,” she finally managed, pulling her head away from Ianto’s shoulder to look up at Jack with reddened eyes.  “But how do we find out?  I want to know.  I _need_ to know.”

“I can’t find anything different about her,” Toshiko said. “My scans show her as perfectly human.”

Jack sighed.  If they couldn’t find any physical differences…then they’d have to try to find mental ones.  “I know what we can try.”

 

**********

 

What he wanted was in the Secure Archives, and it took Jack no time at all to find it. 

As he came back down into the main Hub area from his office, Jack began to have second thoughts about what they were about to do.  Yes, they needed to know if Beth posed a threat, and the mind probe would find anything hidden within her mind, but it was a dangerous piece of alien tech…which was the reason it was kept in the Secure Archives. 

Ianto was bringing out one of the metal restraint chairs as Jack carried the box containing the probe down toward Toshiko’s station.  It would be up to her to monitor the probe and its progress, while Owen kept an eye on Beth’s vital signs.  They had to do this carefully, and yet at the same time it was important to know just what Beth was, because if she was a threat then they would need to act.  They couldn’t afford to sit still and wait for something to happen.  And, if she wasn’t, then they would help her all they could.

“I thought we weren’t going to use that again,” Toshiko said, standing by her station, her arms crossed and looking worried.

“It’s just a mind probe,” Jack tried to pass it off, not wanting to admit that he wasn’t sure about it, either.

“Remember the last time we used it?” Ianto asked softly, his own expression doubting.   Still, he went about checking to see if the chair was ready, even sitting down on it to test its strength.

Jack remembered, all right.  It hadn’t had a very good ending.  “That was different,” he answered, making the attempt to rationalise what had occurred.  “That species had extremely high blood pressure.”  It wasn’t a lie; the Larsians did, in fact, have one of the highest blood pressures in about five different galaxies, and Jack hadn’t realised that the probe would exacerbate it that badly.  Still, he had felt guilty about it, even though they’d managed to gain the Larsians’ invasion plans before the worst had occurred.

 “Oh, right,” the dragon replied darkly, “their heads must explode all the time.”

Gwen, who had been approaching from the Autopsy Bay, gasped, her eyes going very wide.  “You can’t do this!” she exclaimed.  “What if she’s human?  It could kill her!”

“First of all,” Jack growled, “it’s patently obvious that she isn’t human.  Second, she agreed to it.  Third, we need to know that letting her go back to her life isn’t going to come back and bite us in the ass.  Fourth, I told you to stop questioning me and follow orders.  Now, go and get Beth and bring her up here.”

Gwen’s eyes went from wide to narrow, and she tried to stare Jack down.  He met her gaze squarely, knowing she wasn’t about to intimidate him or get him to back down.  She just didn’t understand that, sometimes, distasteful things needed to be done for the best reasons, and that there was no way he was going to change his mind on this.

“Don’t worry,” Toshiko said, stepping in between the two of them, “I’ll stop at the first sign of trouble.”

“Or first sign of exploding,” Ianto muttered. 

“You’re not helping,” Jack snapped, jabbing a finger in his mate’s direction.  He could understand where Ianto was coming from, but this was serious enough without the dragon’s comments.  He knew very well what might happen if things went wrong; he didn’t need to be reminded.

His mate slumped into the chair, and Ianto nodded, the apology implicit in his expressive blue eyes.  Jack returned the nod, accepting it readily.  “Gwen, bring her up,” Jack reiterated, turning back to her and punctuating the command with a sharp jerk of his head in the direction of the Autopsy Bay. 

Gwen looked as if she wanted to argue, but spun on her heel and practically stomped her way toward Owen’s domain, where the medic and Beth were waiting.

Jack wondered if she could act any more like a child who’d lost an argument with her father.

Then he shuddered.  If Gwen had been his daughter he sincerely hoped that she would have turned out better than this. 

Ianto stood, took the five steps over to where Jack was, and touched his mate on the arm.  Jack rested his hand over his mate’s, touching his cheek to Ianto’s in the dragon form of a human kiss.  “You’ve become close to her,” he whispered.  He really should have expected it.  After all, Ianto was a dragon who looked human, and Beth was an alien who was the same.  It made sense.

Ianto pulled away gently.  “I just think she deserves to know everything that’s going to happen,” he answered just as quietly.  “She honestly doesn’t know who she really is, and she does want to know. I also think she’d accept the consequences if it was proved she was an unfriendly.  She seems not to want to hurt anyone.”

“That’s good.  You know if there was another way –“

“I know.  I can’t help but feeling sorry for her, that’s all.  And the mind probe isn’t pleasant…”  Ianto sighed.  “Let me get her some water.  She’ll need it.”

“All right.  Hurry back, I’m sure she’ll want you here.” 

Ianto stepped back, heading toward the kitchen.  Jack stifled the sigh that threatened to escape.  He couldn’t help but be proud of his mate, and once more it struck home to him just how very ‘human’ the dragon actually was.  He wondered why he’d thought that Gwen would ever have taught them all anything when it was Ianto who was the true heart of Torchwood. 

Hiring Gwen was another failure for him, and Jack hated it.  But there wasn’t anything he could do about it, and it proved to him that he truly needed Ianto more than anyone else.  They’d have to talk about what they were going to do with Gwen after all this was over.

“It’s going to work out,” Toshiko murmured. 

Jack glanced in her direction.  “Yeah, but for the best or the worst…”  He let her fill in the rest, which, judging from her expression, she had.

“Here we go,” Owen’s voice pulled his attention away from his technician.  Both he and Gwen were escorting Beth up from the Autopsy Bay, and he had one hand resting on the woman’s elbow in a show of support.  “Have a seat, darlin’.”

Beth did as he bid, looking almost dwarfed by the metal chair.  Toshiko came forward, helping the medic strap Beth’s arms down with the leather restraints.  “Not too tight?” she asked.

Beth shook her head.  “Just try not to kill me, yeah?”

“No one dies on my watch,” Owen answered.  

“That’s good to know,” she said weakly, her voice quivering.

Jack opened the containment box holding the mind probe.  It was a simple metal helmet with long cables attached, and he and Toshiko began hooking it up to Toshiko’s station, wanting to make certain that nothing could go wrong with the device.  The last thing Jack intended was to endanger anyone, but there was a certain risk with the mind probe.  He needed to minimalise that risk as much as possible.

“Here,” he heard Ianto say, and Jack knew he was speaking to Beth.  “You’ll get a bit dehydrated during the procedure.” 

There was a pause, and then Jack heard Beth thank Ianto.  Jack looked over from his work to see the dragon pull a bottle of water away from their guest, a bendy straw stuck in the mouth of the bottle.  He really couldn’t help but love his mate more in that moment; knowing that he could care for Beth, even knowing that she could be dangerous, brought a warm feeling to Jack’s chest and he fought the urge to rub at it. 

“We’re ready,” Toshiko reported.  Jack examined the connections, nodding in response.  He then took the helmet and placed it carefully on Beth’s head, positioning it just right.

“Okay,” Jack said, straightening up.  “The mind probe drills down through your consciousness, so if anything is there it will pop to the surface.”

“Is this going to hurt?” she asked, her voice almost child-like with fear.

“Yeah,” Jack admitted, wanting to be honest with her.

A very small smile crept up onto her lips.  “Your bedside manner’s rubbish.”

Jack had to respect her for that.  Even being as afraid as she obviously was, Beth was still trying to take whatever humour she could from the situation.  He’d seen it before, as a response to stress, and he was glad she could fall back on that in order to deal with things.

“You should see his manners in bed,” Gwen piped up.  “They’re atrocious.”

Jack’s jaw dropped.  _What the hell?_

Ianto leveled a glare full of anger right at her, and both Toshiko and Owen looked just as shocked as Jack felt.  Beth glanced up at Ianto, and then at Gwen, confusion on her face. 

Gwen seemed to get that she’d just said something wildly inappropriate.   “Apparently,” she stammered.  “So I’ve heard…”

“Not from me,” Ianto growled, sounding very possessive.  “And for your information, it would be none of your business anyway.”

Jack shivered slightly at Ianto’s tone, loving the idea of his dragon being that protective of him.  Yes, Jack knew he had a certain reputation, but most of it was just talk, and he’d never do anything to endanger his relationship with his mate.  Also, poking fun at him in front of a possible hostile wasn’t a good idea, and Jack’s shock twisted into fury.

“We’ll talk later, Gwen,” Jack promised, voice low. 

Gwen paled slightly, as she realised that she’d overstepped her bounds.

“Right now,” he got back on track, “we have other business to attend to.” He regarded Beth, who was still looking somewhat confused by what had just happened.  “Toshiko is going to be controlling the probe,” he explained.  “Owen will keep an eye on your vital signs and make sure everything is all right.”

Beth nodded, licking her lips nervously.  “And what will you be doing?”

“I’ll be asking the questions,” Jack said. 

“Okay.”  She turned her eyes up to Ianto.  “Will you stay here with me?”

The dragon nodded.  “I’m not going anywhere, Beth.”  He touched her shoulder gently, then stepped away, still holding the bottle of water, ready if she needed it.

“You don’t have to do this,” Gwen said defiantly. 

“Yes, I do,” Beth answered, frowning.  “I have to know the truth.”

“Are you ready?” Jack asked.

She took a deep breath.  “No, but let’s do this.”

Jack felt another stab of pride in her, as he motioned to Toshiko to begin.  The sound of fingers tapping on a keyboard echoed through the now-silent Hub, and a hum began to build from the probe.  Beth gasped, grabbing onto the arms of the restraint chair reflexively.

Owen checked his own station.  “Everything’s steady,” he reported.

Jack nodded.  “Then, we’ll begin.”

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

**_29 June 2008_ **

****

Ianto felt the plastic of the water bottle bend inwards in his grasp, and he loosened his fingers, hoping no one noticed his nervousness at what Beth was going to be put through.

Yes, Jack was right.  The Larsians had had notoriously high blood pressure, but that didn’t make him feel any better about subjecting a possibly friendly alien to the mind probe.  However, they did need to know who and what Beth Halloran was, and that device was the best thing to use in this situation.  It would pick up anything that Beth might have been too young to recall as well as anything hidden in her subconscious.  He might not like the methods but they did need to know if she was some sort of threat.

Beth was agreeing to it, and that made him feel a bit better.  She wanted to know just as much as they did, and whether it would affect her future with the man she loved.  Ianto sincerely hoped it wouldn’t, but there was no guarantee.   He really didn’t want Beth to become something that Torchwood would have to ‘take care’ of.

He tried to ignore Beth’s gasp as the mind probe came online, and Owen’s report that everything was all right relaxed him just a little.

“Then let’s begin,” Jack said.

His mate stood in front of Beth, staring down at her with a hard expression on his face.  Ianto could see through it though; could see that Jack was hoping that Beth was benign just as much as Ianto was.  Jack was their leader, their Captain, and had to make the difficult decisions all the time, even though he often used his team to try to come up with other solutions.  He would do what needed to be done to protect the planet…not that Jack wouldn’t suffer the guilt from whatever he had to do.   To the others he might seem strong and confident, but Ianto knew the truth.  He knew how Jack’s decisions could take such a toll on him.  He would always be there for his mate, but there were some things that the dragon couldn’t help with, and one of those things was Jack’s burden of guilt.  He tried, but Jack was far too used to self-flagellation to let someone else support him all that much. 

Ianto did try, and Jack did let himself lean on the dragon’s shoulder, but no matter what Ianto did Jack would still feel terrible for his harshness.

Beth gave a little cry, and Jack’s gaze snapped to Owen, who consulted his instruments.  “Safe,” he said, nodding once.

Jack turned back to Beth, leaning over her almost menacingly.  Ianto knew he couldn’t go easy on her in order to get the answers they needed, but he still wasn’t looking forward to it.  “Who killed the burglars, Beth?” he demanded.

Beth grimaced, her body tense.  “I…don’t know…”

“Still safe,” Owen reported.

The whine from the mind probe went up a notch.  “What planet are you from?” Jack went on.

Ianto watched as Beth flinched, her eyes scrunched up in pain.  “Earth!” she almost shrieked.  She began breathing more heavily.   “I’m human…oh God, it hurts!   Please make it stop!”

It was all Ianto could do to stand still.  Intellectually he knew this was necessary, but he didn’t like anyone to be in pain like that. 

“Go deeper,” Jack ordered.

“Are you sure?” Toshiko asked, hands poised on her keyboard.

“Jack, this needs to stop,” Gwen interjected, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.  She looked as if she was about to tear the mind probe from Beth’s head.  And, while Ianto appreciated the sentiment, he knew he’d have to stop her if she did make such a move. 

“Go deeper,” Jack reiterated, shooting Gwen a dark look.

Beth cried out, her voice echoing through the Hub and sending a chill down Ianto’s spine.  The sound disturbed Myfanwy in her nest, and the pteranodon shrieked in complaint.

“Her vital signs are all over the place,” Owen said, his voice laced with concern, “but still within safe limits.”

Toshiko’s hands flew over her keyboard.  “Getting another electromagnetic build-up.”

The lights overhead flickered slightly, but held.

“Who killed those men, Beth?” Jack questioned again sharply.

“I don’t know!” Beth screamed.  “Make it stop!”

Ianto wished he could, he really did.  His heart went out to Beth, and he glanced at his mate, knowing he’d see the regret in his blue eyes even though he was stone-faced and into interrogator mode.

“For God’s sake, Jack!” Gwen exclaimed. 

“Be quiet, Gwen,” Ianto hissed, unable to handle what Beth was going through and Gwen’s determination to make her opinions known as well.  He stepped around the chair, grabbing Gwen by the arm and pulling her away.  “Your comments aren’t necessary, so would you please shut the bloody hell up?”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” she answered in disgust, trying to jerk out of grasp and failing, “but what we’re doing to her is wrong!”

The dragon’s eyes narrowed and he might have been stung by her words if he wasn’t so incandescently angry.  “Me?  Not understanding?  Do you know nothing of me even after the time we’ve worked together?  If anything, it’s _you_ who don’t understand.  Now, either you be silent and let us work or you leave the Hub.”

Gwen glared at him.  “There’s no way I’m leaving that woman in your hands!”

“Fine, but if you can’t keep your mouth shut I’ll personally throw you out.”  He released her, and not giving her a chance to respond he strode back to where he’d been standing, his attention returning to Beth as she squirmed in her seat.   He’d promised to be there with her, and he meant to keep that promise.  Gwen Cooper wasn’t about to make him break that with her behaviour. 

He was getting sick and tired of her, and in that moment he was seriously considering changing his mind about offering her a demotion.  For perhaps the first time he actually wanted her gone, especially after her comment about Jack and his manners in bed.  It was one thing to joke about something you had actual facts about, but this was just badmouthing your boss in front of a potential alien threat.  Gwen had no way of knowing anything about Jack’s personal life, and it irked him that she had pretended she did.

Then he sighed.  Ianto didn’t want to think of Beth as a threat.  Why didn’t Gwen at least see that this was necessary to determine how best to help Beth?  But no, she was so wrapped up in what she thought was right and wrong it was blinding her to what had to be done. 

She would never fit into Torchwood.   She never had. 

Jack was staring down at Beth, a frown marring his features.  Jack’s face wasn’t meant for frowning in Ianto’s personal opinion. 

“Still safe, Jack,” Owen said without prompting.

“Deeper,” Jack ordered.

Toshiko was typing into her keyboard again, and the hum from the mind probe increased.  Beth went rigid in the chair, gasping for air as if she’d never breathe again.  Her knuckles were bloodless from the tightness on the arms of the seat, her shoulders quivering with the stress her body was under.  Ianto’s heart clenched, knowing that what she was going through would get worse.

Suddenly the lights flickered again, this time it was almost a strobing effect, and Ianto had to blink to clear his vision. 

An alarm went off somewhere, and it took the dragon a moment to identify it as the surge warning.   He stepped over to Toshiko’s station, pre-empting one of her screens in order to trace the alarm.  His eyes followed the fault diagrams and he absently switched the claxon off, Myfanwy’s cries replacing the noise and sounding just as strident. 

“The electromagnetic pulse is off the scale,” Toshiko shouted over the pteranodon’s ruckus.

“I’m not sure how much she can take,” Owen warned, his eyes darting over the readings he was getting.

“We have to stop this!” Gwen cried.

Ianto spun to face her.  “Shut the fuck up, Gwen!  I told you this wasn’t your concern!”

He was aware of three other pairs of eyes on him, knowing that his friends had been startled by his use of a certain word.  Yes, he might not curse often but Ianto felt it was perfectly justified in this case.

The dragon was just leaving the terminal in order to make good on his threat to throw her out when Beth let out a strangled gasp.  He promptly forgot about Gwen, and changed direction just in time to see Beth slump down into the chair.

The lights stopped flickering.  No one moved.  Even Myfanwy went silent.

Ianto felt as if his heart had ceased beating.

And then, Beth sat back up.

There was no expression on her face.  It was cold, and Ianto shivered in the chill it seemed to exude.  It was the alien, he suddenly realised.  This was the alien that Beth hadn’t known about, the one that lived within her, the one responsible for the deaths of the two burglars who had broken into the Halloran flat. 

It frightened him, but not as much as when Beth’s arm morphed into something that simply confirmed she was, indeed, not from this world.

The inside of her forearm was puckered, and a sickly red light leaked from what resembled tiny perforations in the skin.  That light flickered slightly, and then settled into a steady luminescence that looked totally wrong against the duskiness of Beth’s arm.  Ianto had to swallow past the horror that was suddenly clogging his throat.

“Oh God,” Gwen gasped.  She sounded as if she was going to throw up, and Ianto hoped absently that, if she did, she’d do it away from the main Hub area.  The smell would permeate the work place for _days_.

Ianto took several steps closer, but was stopped by Jack’s hand on his arm.  “Don’t get to near it,” his mate warned.  Jack’s gaze was warm, and compassionate.  “I know you’re worried about her, but you can’t get too close.”

He nodded, and Jack returned it, understanding in his face.  Of course Jack would understand.

“We hit a buried compartment,” Toshiko said.  “It was locked away.  There was no way Beth would have known about it.”

Jack stepped away from Ianto and in front of Beth.  His own eyes were stony and his face closed.  “Who are you?”

Beth’s dark eyes looked up at Jack, and Ianto shivered at the sheer malevolence in that gaze.  She then turned away to gaze straight ahead.  “ _Kayehla janees, putaak graszh, ish nin fas du hap vac nal.”_

Beth’s voice was the same, and yet it was different.  It was deeper, sounding as if it was coming from somewhere beneath her feet.  There was no inflection in the alien words which made them even more otherworldly, as if the alien simply didn’t care what it was saying.

What _she_ was saying.  Ianto had to remember that this was a person, but it was so very hard hearing that emotionless voice coming from the previously emotional Beth Halloran.  It was like a switch had been flipped, and the personality that had taken control of Beth’s mind didn’t know a thing about human feelings.

“Where are you from?” Jack demanded. 

The alien within Beth simply repeated the same sentence, staring straight ahead as if Jack was somehow beneath her notice. 

Jack thought for a moment, and then said, “How do you like my boots?”

Beth’s dark, soulless eyes turned to regard him, flickering down to his boots and then back up again.  The gesture would have been withering if she was showing any sort of emotion at all.  She then repeated the same words once more, her gaze going back to that empty space in front of her.

Something flew through the air, and it took Ianto a second to realise that Toshiko had tossed Jack a handheld scanner, one that his mate ran over the exposed mechanism within Beth’s arm.  The strange whatever-it-was gleamed balefully back as Jack took his readings.

“What is she saying?” Gwen asked, her voice hushed.  She was pale, and she held her hands almost up to her mouth, as if she wanted to keep her words inside but had spoken too quickly to catch them.

Jack’s face had gone as grim as Ianto had ever seen.  “Name, rank and serial number.  And that’s all she’s likely to say.”  His entire posture had gone from confrontational to completely defeated.  He flipped off the scanner, regarding the unresponsive alien in the body of Beth Halloran as if he wished what he was thinking wasn’t true.

Knowing Jack as well as he did, Ianto guessed that was exactly what his mate was wishing.

“How do you know?” Toshiko asked.  She wasn’t watching her screens any longer, her full attention on Jack.  In fact, everyone in the Hub with the exception of their prisoner – and Ianto had no more doubt that that was what Beth Halloran now was – was waiting for Jack to answer that particular question.

“Because I know who she is and what’s she’s doing here,” Jack answered, his voice gruff with the knowledge he now had about Beth’s alien-ness. 

Ianto had the terrible idea that this was going to get as bad as it possibly could be.  He moved toward Jack, who absently handed him the scanner and placed a hand on the dragon’s shoulder.  Ianto could feel the comfortable heat of his mate’s concern through his jacket and shirt, and was grateful for it.

“Shut down the probe,” Jack directed. 

Toshiko did as he bid, and the whining of the mind probe settled into silence.  Owen did the same with his own equipment, not needing to monitor Beth any longer.

“It’s off,” she said quietly. 

“How do you know what’s going on?” Gwen demanded, her voice harsh in the sudden quietness of the Hub.

“Give it a rest, Cooper.”  Even Owen was keeping his voice down, seemingly crushed under the weight of whatever conclusions Jack had come to.  “Jack’ll explain when he can.”

Ianto was grateful for the rest of the team’s support of their captain, and he knew he’d be saying something to both Toshiko and Owen later.  But, for now, they would have to hear Jack out, and he had the horrible feeling that it wouldn’t be good, judging from Jack’s demeanour.

The strange implant in Beth’s arm folded itself closed, until only bare flesh was left in its wake.  Ianto wondered if she was some sort of cybernetic creature, along the lines of the Cybermen.   No, he wouldn’t speculate.  He’d wait for Jack’s explanation.

Then Beth jerked upright with a gasp worthy of one of Jack’s resurrections.  “Oh, you weren’t kidding when you said that would hurt,” she gasped.  Her eyes – her lively, dark eyes – looked up at Ianto hopefully.  “Did you find anything?”

And Ianto knew he’d be completely truthful with her on that particular question…as soon as he knew the answer to that himself.

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

**_29 June 2008_ **

****

A lot people thought, when realising that Jack came from the 51st Century, that he’d have all this knowledge of what the future would hold, and that he’d be able to stop the major bad things before they happened, thus saving countless lives in the bargain.

This would be completely false, even if it didn’t violate all sorts of rules against tampering with major temporal events.

Jack had been born on the Boeshane Peninsula, which was considered a backwater by most of the human race…and they were, of course, correct.  Jack’s being accepted into the Time Agency had been a big deal at the time, because there weren’t many who didn’t consider him to be some sort of backward hick who could barely read and write, let alone know the difference between a time loop and a tesseract.   It had been an uphill battle, and to be fair Jack hadn’t been the best student in a few of his courses, but he’d taken to Temporal Theory and Quantum Mechanics like he’d been born with the equations written across his frontal lobe and had used an atomic modulator for a teething ring.  He’d also been an ace at pretty much every vehicle he’d had to learn to pilot, and had done very well indeed in several of the technical labs that he’d thought would be boring until he’d actually set foot inside them.

Of course, he’d also learned about paradoxes and how not to create them, which had brought home the fact that he’d never be able to go back and save Gray, since it had been that particular event that had set him on the path to joining the Time Agency.  Jack hadn’t been at all happy about that, but even as much as he adored his younger brother and wanted to find him, he knew he couldn’t chance risking the universe on his personal crusade. 

As much as the Time Agency focused on scientific and technological theory, it really didn’t teach much actual history.  A Time Agent learned what they’d needed to know from one assignment to the next, and that could vary wildly.  Jack’s brain had been filled with such esoteric knowledge from what had caused the American Civil War, to being able to recite the twelve generations of rulers of the planet Szelany up to King Uban the First, who had been the last of his line and who had died spectacularly when he’d tried to convert his royal palace into a spaceship and had paid for substandard spatial sealing on all the windows, which had caused the entire structure to implode once it had hit vacuum.  To say the man had been insane was the understatement of the galaxy.

When Jack had come to Earth and had found himself in 1869, he really hadn’t much of a clue as to what to expect.  He’d had to learn on the fly – which was the sign of a really good Time Agent – and he’d managed to fit in fairly well…until he’d discovered his immortality, of course.  That had started a years’ long bender until he’d finally been caught out by the Torchwood Lesbians in 1899.  At that point it simply wasn’t safe to be showing any form of weakness, and loose lips sank timelines.

It had been bad in the beginning.  Emily Holroyd and Alice Guppy had been quite fond of asking him about future events, and when he claimed not to know they’d done some very creative things to him until they were convinced that he honestly hadn’t a clue.  The questions had petered out after a while, when his colleagues had begun to realise that Jack wasn’t the font of all knowledge where the future was concerned.  Certainly, he could quote chapter and verse on World War Two, but had had no idea there would be a Great San Francisco Earthquake until after the fact.  Certainly there had still been teasing, like Gerald wanting to know the Derby winners for the next ten years, but eventually things did calm down and Jack was allowed to do his job without someone trying to get him to cough up some form of future knowledge.

That wasn’t to say that he never used the information he did have, although that usually extended to future tech and the actual events that he had been a witness to.  So, when Beth Halloran’s arm changed and she seemed to gain an entirely new personality, he’d known exactly what she was.

“She’s a sleeper agent,” he said, once everyone had gathered around the boardroom table.  “It clicked as soon as I saw the implant.”  He turned to Beth, who was sitting in Ianto’s usual chair, the dragon standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder.  Jack knew it was as much for comfort as to keep the woman in place in case she decided to bolt.  “I’m sorry.”

Beth was shaking her head in denial.  “What does that even mean?”

“We’ll show you.  Toshiko?”

The technician tapped a key on her keyboard, and the large screen on the wall flared to life.  It replayed everything that had occurred under the mind probe, and by the time it was finished Beth had gone ashen.   “But what am I?” she asked, distressed.

“Yeah, Jack,” Owen echoed.  “You said you knew.”

Jack wished he didn’t.  But he’d once been sent into a warzone, and he’d seen this first-hand.  He had to fight the shiver that threatened to crawl up his spine; even after so long, those particular memories were still quite vivid.  “No one knows very much, because they don’t usually leave many survivors.  Their official designation is Cell 1-1-4.  They infiltrate planets, adapting their bodies, and gather intelligence, sometimes for years.  They watch, until they’re ready to take over.”

“That’s….creepy,” Gwen murmured.  Jack didn’t miss the glare that Ianto sent her way.  Jack could tell something was going to explode between his Second and the former copper, and personally he thought it was about time. 

“If we’re lucky,” he went on, bringing the meeting back on track, “then Beth is the first.  They send in an advance guard, in order to gather intel.” He turned back to Beth.  “They gave you false memories, the better for you to blend in.”  He felt sorry for the woman; he couldn’t help it.  Beth’s world had been completely destroyed simply because she’d defended her home and her husband.    “Your real self took over briefly and killed the burglars.  It was self-preservation.”

Beth looked totally wrecked.  “Then I did kill those men.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I’m…some sort of mass murdering alien.”  A single sob escaped her.  “No, not all of my memories could be fake.  I know I love Mike, and Mike loves me.”

 “Of course he does,” Gwen answered stoutly.  “And you, him.”

“So what’s real?”  She looked up at Ianto, and Jack could tell that she was depending on him to honest with her, to tell her everything.  She was practically begging for the truth, and the dragon opened his mouth to speak.

But Gwen beat him to it.

“You both are,” she said.  “You both fell in love.  That happened, which proves that you’re just as human as anyone else.”

“You’re not helping, Gwen,” Ianto growled.  Jack could see the protective instincts rising within his mate, and the anger that her words had engendered.

Beth reached up and put her hand on top of Ianto’s where it still rested on her shoulder.  “It’s okay,” she murmured.  Her dark eyes met Gwen’s.  “I don’t need platitudes from anyone,” she stated.   “I want the complete and utter truth. I need to know what’s going to happen to me and what this…thing is in my arm.  So don’t patronize me, all right?  I’m not human, and I guess I never was.  It doesn’t change how I feel about Mike and my memories of our life together.”  Her face crumpled.  “But we’ll never have what we’d planned and it’s all because some weird alien created Beth Halloran so I could be some sort of spy for their invasion.”

Jack was proud of her, and he suddenly felt cheated that he wouldn’t be able to get to know her. 

Gwen looked as if she’d been slapped, and her eyes widened almost comically.  “You can’t give up hope,” she encouraged.  “We can fix this.”

“No Gwen, we can’t,” Jack told her.  “Technically, Beth Halloran doesn’t exist.  Once the programming takes over we’ll all be in danger.”

“Even now that implant is gathering information,” Toshiko added.  She tapped in a command on her keyboard, and the large screen lit up again, showing flashes of images…some of them looking very familiar.  “It’s all being stored inside, and I’m guessing that when it gathers enough it will transmit it back to their homeworld.”  She brought up a schematic.  “This is a force-field generator.  It creates an impervious layer just above her skin, not even a nanometre thick.  That’s why none of our needles would penetrate.”

The images from Beth’s implant kept playing.  “Damn, they even know about us,” Owen pointed out, obviously recognizing some of what was being shown.

“They know more than I do about this place,” Ianto growled, sounding both angry and scandalised.  “No one knows more about this place than I do!”

Jack would have found his mate’s irritation funny if it weren’t such a desperately bad situation.  The technology in Beth’s arm was steadily tapping into Torchwood’s systems and recording everything that it could find.  It didn’t seem to matter about the security around mainframe; everything was being accessed, unless they could somehow stop it.  “Tosh, can you do something to shore up our security?”

“I’ve been trying ever since I found out about the hacking,” she answered, “but it’s like everything I put into place is somehow bypassed.”

“Can’t you turn it off?” Beth asked worriedly, rubbing her arm roughly.  “I don’t want it doing anything!”

Jack watched Toshiko as she considered the question.  “I can try to isolate the transceiver and fry it with an EM pulse.”

“Won’t that tip whoever it is off?” Owen asked.

“It’s not signaling anyone right now,” she answered.  “I’m not sure about what will happen if she activates.”

“Then we need to find a way to keep her human,” Gwen stated.  “There has to be a way.”

“If you come up with something,” Ianto retorted, “then we’d certainly love to hear it.”

“Enough,” Jack ordered, knowing he’d have to do something to break the tension between the two.  He really should have known this was going to happen at some point, that Ianto would get tired of Gwen’s poking, but the dragon had so much patience that he’d thought his mate would have been able to hold out long enough for them to actually get Gwen to either straighten out or to work out a way to Retcon her that wouldn’t come back to bite them in the ass.  “We need to figure out what to do.”

“Actually,” Owen mused, “I think I might have an idea.”  He paused just long enough to glance around the table.  “Why don’t we freeze her?”

 Jack considered Owen’s suggestion.  It made sense.  If Beth was in cryogenic suspension then she couldn’t activate.  There was no true way to save her; she would always be in deep freeze, but it would mean that they wouldn’t have to kill her.   

“What do you mean?” Beth asked, alarmed.  “You mean, like stick me in a freezer or something?”  

“No, nothing like that,” Ianto assured her.  “We have an advanced cryogenic set-up here.  It would be like falling asleep.”

“But I’d never wake up?” Her tone was bitter. 

“Not until we find a way to keep you from activating,” Gwen answered. 

“That’s if you can.”  Beth turned her gaze to Ianto.  “You have to promise me that you won’t let me hurt anyone.  No matter what happens, if I activate you have to swear you’ll do what it takes to keep me from killing.”

“You’re not going to hurt anyone,” Gwen exclaimed, throwing a dark look toward Ianto.

Jack watched as his mate’s eyes narrowed and he glared at Gwen.  He addressed Beth, however.  “I promise you.  I won’t let you hurt anyone.”

Jack knew exactly what that vow cost Ianto.  He had to have been remembering Lisa, and what he’d had to do to stop her.  Of course he didn’t know Beth as well as he had that other dragon, but that didn’t matter…Ianto would take that vow seriously, no matter the outcome.  Whether it was by making certain Beth remained frozen for eternity, or pulling the trigger…

He wanted to yell at Beth for making Ianto give that promise, but he couldn’t find it in himself to do that.  It was a show of trust that she was giving Ianto, trust that she wasn’t giving anyone else.  He wondered what had gone on down in the interrogation room while he’d been in his office with Gwen.   Something had changed between Ianto and Beth, and while Jack was certainly glad that Beth seemed to be finally accepting the situation as it was, he was worried about his mate and what doing his duty would mean to him.

“I’d really like to see Mike before…”  Beth swallowed hard, her eyes on Jack.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but we can’t risk it.”

“What would happen if you activated while at the hospital?” Ianto pointed out.

Beth nodded reluctantly.  “I understand.  I just wish…”

“How about a letter?” the dragon suggested.  “Certainly we could get a letter to Mike…?”

Jack frowned.  It was against Torchwood regulations to let an enemy alien contact someone on the outside, but at the same time Beth wasn’t under the control of the cell yet.  Could they really trust her to write something that wouldn’t give things away?

But then, he knew how he’d feel if he was in a situation like this and wasn’t able to contact Ianto, or Alice.  There was no correct answer to her request, and if he was honest with himself he felt guilty about having to sequester Beth away.  There really was no hope that she would ever be able to be brought out of cryogenic suspension.  That much he did know from future experience. 

It might have been kinder to simply shoot her.

“That…should be fine,” he capitulated.  “But you cannot say anything about where you are, and what’s going on.  All you can do is say goodbye.”  He hated to be so tough on her, but there was no alternative. 

Beth nodded.  “That’s all I want.  I just want Mike to know I love him.”

“Ianto can get you paper and pen while we get ready to try to deactivate the implant,” Toshiko said.  She stood, pushing her laptop closed. 

Owen stood as well.  “Then let’s adjourn to my lair,” he replied, trying to inject a bit of comedic horror into his voice.  It failed horribly.

As they left the boardroom, Beth reached over and squeezed Jack’s hand.  “Thank you,” she said sincerely, giving Jack a tired, sad smile.

Jack nodded, watching as the four of them left the room.  That left him and Gwen, and he really didn’t want to be alone with her.  But he had to be clear.  “You’re not helping her.  So stop trying to make things better when they won’t ever be.”

“And it’s helping her by not giving her any hope at all?” she challenged, her hands on her hips.

“It’s a false hope, Gwen,” Jack answered harshly.  “There is absolutely no hope that Beth will ever be free of the cryogenic chamber we’re going to be putting her into.”

“You can’t know that!”

“Yes, I can.  Beth deserves to know everything that’s going to happen to her.  Don’t take away her dignity just because you have to try to make her feel better about losing everything she’s known. So keep your misplaced compassion to yourself for once and let us do what we need to do.”

“I can’t believe you can be this heartless, Jack!”

“And I can’t believe you’re being this willfully stubborn...no, I take it back.  I do.  Everything has to be about how you see things, even when you’re wrong.”  He stepped right up into her space, and to her credit she didn’t back down.  “Not everything is about your personal sense of justice, Gwen Cooper.  If I’d known what I would be getting into when I hired you, I would have upped the Retcon dosage and made absolutely certain you remembered nothing of Torchwood.”

Not wanting to hear anything else she had to say, Jack spun on his heel and left the boardroom.

 

 

  


	9. Chapter 9

**_29 June 2008_ **

****

Ianto was dreading what would happen next.

Owen’s idea of freezing Beth was a good one, but he was positive that she’d never be awakened.  The thought of her remaining in limbo for eternity disturbed him, and yet he couldn’t see himself willfully killing her before she ever became a danger to anyone.  He wasn’t a murderer, and neither were his teammates despite what Jack sometimes claimed about himself.

Beth seemed almost calm as they made their way down to the Autopsy Bay.  He was proud of her, and yet so very afraid for her.  He wanted this to work out, for Beth and Mike to have their happy ending, but at this point there wasn’t one of those in sight for the young couple. 

“We were going to go on holiday,” Beth murmured as they drew near Owen’s domain.  “Nothing much, just a couple of days away.  I was really looking forward to it…”

“I’m sorry.”

She turned a sad smile to him.  “I know you are –“

Beth stopped in her tracks, her face going pale.  She bent over, gasping, her left hand squeezing her right arm tightly, right where the implant was.  “Oh god…” she moaned.

Ianto’s wrapped his arm around her waist, although whether it was for support or to restrain her he wasn’t even sure himself.  “What is it?” he asked urgently.   Out of the corner of his eye he saw Toshiko coming up the Autopsy stairs, and he shook his head to keep her from getting closer in case Beth would activate and the alien within her do something.

“Those men…” Beth was shivering against him.  “I…really did kill those men, I can see myself doing it…”

The dragon wanted to curse.  It was obvious she was remembering what had happened at her home, which couldn’t be good.

“The real memory is coming back,” Jack said, coming to stand on the other side of Beth.  “It could be destroying the human persona.  The sooner we get this done, the better.”

Beth took a shuddering breath, standing upright.  “It’s gone,” she said, relieved.  “Thank god.”

Ianto looked over her head to Jack; his mate looked angry, and somehow Ianto knew it wasn’t about Beth recalling last night.  A sudden flurry of movement signaled Gwen storming past, not giving any of them even a glance.  He wondered what Jack had said to her, and he hoped whatever it was it would curtail some of Gwen’s need to give Beth any false hope.  Beth deserved every bit of truth they could give her.  She needed to be informed of what was going to happen, in order to make the best decision possible…not that there weren’t many she could actually make.  It would be so much easier on all of them if Beth cooperated, and she was perfectly willing to do so as long as she knew the situation.

“Jack will take you down to Owen,” Ianto said to her, “while I get you paper and pen to write your note to Mike.”

Beth nodded.  “Hurry, okay?”  Her face was drawn and tired, and Ianto hugged her one-armed before releasing his grip on her waist.  He watched as Jack led her away, sighing as the sheer unfairness of this whole thing struck him once more.

Grabbing a pen and tablet of paper from his desk, Ianto headed down into the Autopsy Bay, where Beth had taken a seat on the exam table, her whole demeanour projecting exhaustion and defeat.  Ianto didn’t like to see her so helpless, but there really wasn’t anything anyone could do.  The situation was such a bad one all the way around, with no way out.

She straightened as he approached, taking the paper and pen from him with a soft word of thanks.  The dragon touched her shoulder in sympathy, then stepped back to give her a bit of privacy while she wrote her goodbye to Mike.

Owen bustled around the room, getting his equipment ready for the freezing.  Toshiko did the same, fiddling with her computers and scanners, anything in an obvious attempt not to look at Beth.  Ianto didn’t have to see it to know that Toshiko was feeling almost as badly as he was, and he wondered if she also thought that they were failing Beth in some way, as Ianto did. 

He wanted there to be a way to help her, and there wasn’t.  It was one of those tragic times when there really wasn’t anything anyone could do.  It brought up memories of Lisa, and how he’d tried so hard to save her, and in the end he just hadn’t been able to, she’d been too far gone. 

Ianto didn’t have the emotional connection with Beth that he’d had with Lisa, nor was the woman sitting on the exam table one of his own kind.  But, in a way, they were similar, in that they’d had this done to them, and that there was no cure.  Sometimes there just wasn’t any hope.

Jack had retreated to the upper level, and was standing beside Gwen, who looked like she’d bitten into something sour.  He wondered what had happened, or if she was just bothered by what was going to happen now.  He couldn’t blame her, but at the same time she just wasn’t getting it that Beth was the important one, and deserved to know what was going on.  No false platitudes were useful now, and Gwen always did have a problem with knowing when to do the right thing…well, the right thing for herself and not for anyone else. 

Beth finished her letter, and Ianto moved forward to take it, folding it without reading it and sliding it into the inner pocket of his suit jacket.  They would have to, of course, to make certain there wasn’t anything in it that would be detrimental to Torchwood’s security, but he was pretty certain it would pass muster.

“Promise me something,” she said, touching his arm and keeping him from getting out of Owen’s way.

“Whatever I can,” he answered.

“If you can’t figure out a way to keep me human, then I don’t want you to wake me up.  Just turn everything off.  Okay?”

Ianto wanted to refuse.  He wanted to rail against whoever was responsible for Cell 1-1-4, for creating Beth Halloran and for making her so very human. 

“I promise,” he said instead, squeezing her hand.

There was a sound of shoes scraping against the tiles, and Ianto glanced up.  Jack had his own hand on Gwen’s arm, and he was practically looming over her.  Gwen was staring up at him belligerently, and the dragon wondered what his mate had stopped the ex-copper from doing.  No telling really where Gwen was concerned.

Then he released Gwen, and turned to look down on Beth.  “You have _our_ word,” Jack told her, favouring her with a small, albeit comforting smile.

“Thank you,” she said gratefully. 

“Don’t give up hope,” Gwen called down.  “We’re gonna do anything we can to help you.”

Beth didn’t answer.  Instead, she lay back onto the table, Ianto helping her get as comfortable as she could on the cold metal.  “It’s funny,” she said, “but I’ve always had this feeling that I didn’t quite belong, that I was meant for something else…little did I know just how right I was.”  A single tear tracked down the side of her face, and Ianto reached over to lightly brush it away.

Toshiko cleared her throat.  “Okay, I’m going to hit the transceiver with an electromagnetic pulse.  It won’t hurt, I promise.”

“Do it,” Beth practically ordered, her body tense.

Ianto moved to the wall, in order to keep out of Toshiko and Owen’s way.  He kept his eyes on Beth, watching her reactions as the technician ran a piece of tech over the area where the implant had shown itself.  “This will also take out the force field generator.”

“Good.  I don’t want to be invincible.” 

There were so many undercurrents in that single phrase that Ianto wanted to shiver.  _It would make her easier to kill if need be,_ was the one that floated to the top of the morass that was his thoughts, and the dragon hated himself for it.

“After that,” Owen added, “I’m gonna sedate you, then freeze you.  It’ll be just like going to sleep…only a hell of a lot colder.”

Toshiko held her device over the implant, and from what Ianto could see on the monitor it seemed to stop working.  She stepped back in order to let Owen get to work.

The medic slid a needle into Beth’s arm, and she flinched.  Then her dark eyes met Ianto’s from across the bay, and she smiled. 

“Thank you,” he heard her say just before the sedation took effect.

Ianto really had no idea just what she was thanking him for.

 

**********

 

The dragon was waiting down in the vault for Beth’s cryogenic chamber.

The rumbling of the lift down from the Autopsy Bay came to his ears, and he waited patiently for the casket to arrive.  When it did, he pulled it from the lift and onto a stretcher, and Ianto wheeled it over to the drawer he had prepared. 

Through the frosted window in the chamber Beth’s face looked peaceful, rimed in ice, and he wondered if she’d really gained some measure of peace knowing that she wouldn’t be hurting anyone now.  As he pushed the wheeled stretcher along, he let one hand stroke across the icy transparent material, and he said a prayer to the Great Dragons that she would indeed find some measure of peace within her frozen sleep.

With the utmost care Ianto slid Beth’s cryo-chamber into the open vault, and he paused for a moment before shutting the door and locking it. 

Then, with a single glance backward, he walked away, heading back up into the main areas of the Hub.  The sound of paper crinkled softly in his pocket.

 

**********

 

Ianto entered the work area, heading over to his desk.  He meant to get Beth’s letter checked over and then out to Mike as soon as he could.  He could feel eyes upon him, and he didn’t have to look up to know it was his mate checking up on him.  He was grateful that Jack was there, and he glanced upward into his caring blue eyes.  Ianto nodded once, and then pulled the letter from his pocket.

_Dearest Mike,_

_I’m sorry you’re getting this letter, but it was the only way I could face you with what happened.  I was the one who killed those men, and although it was to protect you I can’t help but feel terrible about it.  Taking another person’s life was something I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do but I did.  It’s too hard, and I’m sorry but I can’t deal with it._

_So, by the time you read this, it will be too late.   I don’t want you to feel like anything that’s happened is in any way your fault, because it isn’t.  Everything I do is because I love you, and I hope you never forget that._

_Goodbye._

_Love always, Beth._

 

Ianto had to wipe his eyes.  What he’d just read was basically a suicide note.  He honestly hadn’t known what to expect, but he found that this wasn’t it.  It was for the best this way, so that Mike would be given some small sense of closure, but still…there had been really no hope of Beth ever being free, and it wouldn’t have done any good to lead Mike on. 

He sighed, reaching into a desk drawer for an envelope.  He would make certain the letter got to Mike at the hospital –

The lights suddenly went out.

An alarm began blaring, and the emergency lighting came on.  Ianto quickly got onto this computer to see where the security breach was coming from.  He could hear Jack cursing from somewhere in the direction of his mate’s office.

“Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Jack demanded.

“Checking,” Toshiko called out, saving Ianto from having to answer.  His fingers flew over the keys, and he managed to trace the alarm to…

“It’s Beth,” he said over the sound of the alarm.

“Turn that damned thing off,” Jack snarled. 

Less than a second later, the Hub was silent once more.  In another moment, the lights were back on and the Hub was back to normal.

“What do you mean, it’s Beth?”

Ianto looked up at his mate.  “The drawer I put her in is open.  She’s gone.”   The evidence was on his screen, courtesy of the CCTV cameras down in the vaults.  

“How is that possible?” Gwen asked from her own station, posing the question that had to have been on everyone’s minds.

“It isn’t,” Owen growled.  Ianto felt him leaning over his chair, staring at the monitor where the empty drawer was apparent.  “All of her vitals were at zero.  She was frozen!”

“She isn’t now,” Ianto hated to point out. 

“What did she do?” Jack wanted to know.  “Some sort of virus?  A lockdown?”

“I’m checking the systems,” Toshiko said, her own eyes not leaving her terminals.  “From what I can see, it looks like she just turned the lights off.”

“She knows everything about this place,” Jack growled.  “It’s all in her arm…the Hub’s layout, the tunnels, security codes…everything.  She could have shut us down, blown us up…anything!”

“Why didn’t she?” Ianto asked.  He knew he had to be careful, that hoping for the best in this situation was the wrong way to go, but something within him was practically screaming that, if she’d meant them harm, she could very well have killed them all before they’d even known what was going on. 

“I swear she was frozen,” Owen exclaimed.  Ianto felt him push off the back of his chair, and the dragon watched him begin to pace. 

“Toshiko,” Jack said, “you did turn off the transceiver?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, I was...until you asked. “ Her eyes were darting fitfully across whatever readings that were appearing on her screens.  “As far as I can tell, it was shut down.”

“Hang on,” Owen interrupted, “everything about her is a lie.  We know it is.  She’s an alien with a weird thing in her arm that we can’t see unless she wants us to.  She made us think she’d been frozen when apparently she hadn’t been.  Who’s to say she didn’t completely fool the equipment before?”

“You’re saying she wasn’t really frozen then?”  Gwen scoffed.  “How is that even possible?”

“Don’t forget that at least the forcefield generator was disabled,” Toshiko pointed out.  “You were able to inject her.”

“But a lot of that had to have been faked,” Owen added.  “We all thought she was frozen, and yet she got up out of the cryogenic chamber.”

“That would take a hell of a lot of power,” their technician whistled.

“Look,” Jack said, stepping in the middle of their group, “enough theories.  Right now we need to find her.  We have to assume she’s been activated and is on the loose somewhere –“

“No, you don’t.”

As one, the entire team turned in the direction of the voice.

Beth stood at the top of the stairs leading down into the bowels of the Hub, looking terrified.  

 

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

 

**_29 June 2008_ **

****

“I don’t know what happened,” Beth whimpered, as she sat on the ratty couch, rubbing her arm roughly.  “I remember going to sleep…and then the next minute I’m standing outside these drawer things, wondering where I am and how I got there.”

Ianto handed her a coffee as Jack stood, watchful.  “It had to have been the true personality,” he mused.  “It didn’t like being frozen so it made us think you were.”

Beth was shaking her head, and it was obvious to Jack that everything was finally piling up on her so heavily that her shoulders were physically bowed with the weight of it all.  He felt sorry for her, but at the same time, if the buried personality could do all that without her knowing…it had to be getting stronger, closer to the surface.  With her being able to remember what had occurred with the burglars and now this, Jack was worried that she was very close to activating.

“My first thought was to leave here and go to Mike,” Beth confessed.  “And I was going to do it…but then it hit me that whatever was inside me would want me out here.  I couldn’t risk it!  What if this thing was triggered while I was at the hospital?  Or on the street, around innocent people?   It was all I could do to turn around and come back, but I had to do it.  I trust you to stop me if something goes wrong.”  Her expression jibed with her words, and Jack couldn’t help but once again be proud of her for putting up what was the fight of her life. 

It must have been the hardest thing ever to give up seeing the man she loved once more.  Jack had a feeling that he wouldn’t have been as strong if something was keeping him from Ianto’s side.  Whoever had programmed this personality into this agent had done a piss-poor job of it, which was all the better for Torchwood.

And then the Hub shook.

“What the hell was that?” Jack demanded.  Whatever it was, it had sounded fairly far away, and yet it had been strong enough to rattle the Hub.

Toshiko, who had been among them watching Beth, darted back to her computer.  Ianto did the same to his terminal, and twin clacking across keyboards sounded as they worked.

“It was a petrol tanker,” she reported.  “It looks like someone wanted to take out the M4 road link for some reason…no, wait.”  Toshiko paused, squinting at her screen as if trying to make it tell her something besides what it was actually showing. “No, not the road…there’s an underground fuel pipeline, which is why the explosion was so large.”  She turned to look at Jack.  “It’s a special supply for the military.  They use it for emergencies.”

“Not anymore,” Owen growled.

“It’s begun,” Jack replied. 

“Also,” Ianto said, spinning in his chair to look at the rest of the group, “I’ve just got a report that Patrick Grainger has been murdered.”

“Who?” Gwen asked.

 “He’s the leader of the Council,” the dragon answered.  “He was stabbed several times in the chest, and once through the forehead.”

“I didn’t do that!”  Beth denied.   “I never left here!”

“We know, Beth,” Ianto soothed.  “If you had left we would have known.  Besides, you didn’t have enough time to get all the way across town and then get back here in the time the alarms went off.”

“There are other members of the cell out there,” Jack said, “and they’ve been activated.”

“But why not me then?”  Beth asked, the fear in her eyes almost chilling Jack to the bone.

“We removed you from their network,” Toshiko answered.  “When the signal was sent out to activate you all, you simply didn’t receive it.”

“Does that mean she won’t activate ever?” Gwen asked, looking hopeful.

“No,” Jack denied.  “It just means, once they figure it out, they’ll work on some other way to erase Beth so the buried personality can be free to do its work.”

“But why Grainger?” Owen asked.  “Why would they want to kill him?”

“He’s also the city co-ordinator,” Ianto supplied.  “He takes charge of the city in case of emergencies. He has all the security protocols.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“I know everything,” Ianto said, managing not to sound too smug.  “And it says so on the bottom of my screen.”

“They’re putting all the pieces into place.”  Jack wanted to deny it was happening, but he couldn’t.  Just the look on Beth’s face was enough to convince anyone.   He turned to Beth.  “I know you’re not hooked into the cell anymore, but there might be a way you can tell us what their plan is.”

Beth was frowning in concentration.  “I can…access the implant.”  It suddenly flared to life.  “I think…someone’s taken out city-wide communications too…”

Toshiko turned back to her station.  “She’s right,” the technician confirmed.  “The network is down.”

“The network?” Owen pulled out his mobile.

‘Yes, everything.”

“Even mobiles?”

“Yes, and I can’t just rig something up.”  Toshiko looked like she wanted to tear her hair out…or maybe Owen’s, since he was being deliberately obtuse.

“What about the phone in Jack’s office?” the medic asked. “We should be at least warning the military that we have an invasion in progress.”

“The…entire…network…is…down,” Toshiko answered, very slowly, as if trying to explain it to a little kid.

Jack would have been amused if it weren’t for the seriousness of the situation.

“Mobiles, landlines, tin cans with bits of string,” Ianto explained.   “Everything.  Absolutely everything.  No phones, phones all broken.”  He raised a hand up to his head, miming a phone with his fingers.  “Hello, anyone there?  No?  Because the phones aren’t working.”

“You’re a sarcastic bastard,” Owen snapped.  “I got it.”

“Good,” Jack butted in before the two could turn this into a complete snark-fest.  “We need to find out if there are anymore out there.”

“One more, there were three but two are dead,” Beth answered.  “And I think I can track him, if I’m doing this right.”

That was good news, but at the same time did Jack dare trust her?  Yes, she hadn’t been activated with the rest of the cell, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen; in fact, he was pretty damned sure it would at some point, and then they’d be helpless.  At least they could stop her though, now that her force field had been shut off.  Still, there could be no limit to the damage she could do if she got free.

However, it was the only option they had.  They had to stop whatever was going to happen, and it needed to be now. 

“All right,” he said.  “Ianto, you’re with us.  Toshiko, there’s a CB radio in my office, and we’ll get the other one from the Archives on the way out.  Once we know where the third alien is going, we’ll need all the information we can get.  Owen, I want you on standby.  There could be a lot of injured people before this is over, so get what supplies you’ll need together.”

“I want to go with you,” Gwen demanded.

Jack met her angry gaze squarely.  “No.  As of now, you’re restricted to Hub duty.  No more field assignments because I can’t trust you.”

“You can’t do that!”

“I just did.”  He turned away from her.  “Ianto, get the second CB and head to the SUV.  We’ll meet you there.” 

“On it.”  The dragon vanished down the corridor toward the Archives.

Jack glanced at Beth.  She looked determined, and Jack nodded once.  “Are you ready?”

“I am,” she answered.  “But if you need to stop me, I’m counting on you and Ianto not to let me hurt anyone.”

“Agreed.”  He took her by the arm to lead her away. 

“Jack!” Gwen called out as they were leaving.

“I don’t have time for this, Gwen,” he said sharply.  “The world is about to end and you’re worried about yourself.  Shut up and do your job.”

“I don’t trust either of you with Beth!”

“But I do,” Beth answered, stopping long enough to turn and glare at her.  “Jack and Ianto will do the right thing.”  She looked back at Jack.  “We need to go now.  He’s heading out of town, but I can’t get the exact direction yet.”

“Then let’s do this.” 

 

**********

 

Jack was behind the wheel as the SUV raced out of town, in the direction Beth was indicating.

They had to dodge emergency vehicles, and he was glad that most of the response teams had radios instead of relying completely on the now-defunct mobile network.  Ianto had flipped the CB over to the emergency channel for a few seconds, and the chatter had been so thick it was almost hard to make out what anyone was saying.  It reminded Jack of being in a war, and he didn’t like the feeling at all; if they didn’t stop that last sleeper agent, it could very well mean a war, and that was something Jack wanted to stop at all cost.

He glanced into the rearview mirror at Beth.  She was staring down at something, and Jack was willing to bet it was the implant in her arm.  He was worried about her, but at this point he wasn’t certain if it was because she could activate and try to continue her mission, or if she wouldn’t and would be stuck in a form of limbo forever.  At this point he didn’t know which was worse.

“He’s heading for an abandoned farm outside the city,” she murmured.

“Do you know why?” Ianto asked. 

“To gain access to whatever is out there.  I can’t tell what it is.”

Jack relayed the information to Toshiko back at the Hub, and after a few moments said, _“There’s nothing there…nothing on the surface, at least.  Still checking.”_

“We need to hurry,” Beth said.  “He’s almost there.”

“What happens when it starts?” Ianto asked.

“I…don’t know,” she confessed.  “I just know the arm stuff, and that’s all new since I got out of that drawer.”

“So no idea about how they get the heavy weapons.”  Jack wasn’t surprised that she didn’t know.  Beth would have had very specific instructions to follow, so she wouldn’t have had to be told what the others in the cell were doing. 

Jack wracked his brain, trying to recall everything he’d once seen about Cell 1-1-4.  The one time he’d gotten there it had been too late, the planet teetering on the edge of defeat, and no one seemed to have any information on just how the cell had gotten their initial foothold.  That world had practically been destroyed in the aftermath, so no evidence had existed any longer.

_“There used to be an old coal mine out there,”_ Toshiko said over the radio.  _“The Army sealed the records…let me get into the military files and see what I can find.”_

Jack jammed his foot down onto the gas, and the SUV’s engine gunned as it sped up.  He had the distinct feeling that time was running out, that they needed to get to wherever they were going quickly.  The sleeper cell would not succeed in whatever it had planned, not if Jack had anything to say about it.

This was one of those times when he wished he was fluent in Earth history.  Although he did know very well that the Earth was fine in his own future, who knew what had gone on before?  Hell, the only reason he knew certain things now was because of information the Doctor had let slip…and that hadn’t been very much at all.

_“That wasn’t even difficult…oh, God…”_

“What is it, Tosh?” Ianto said into their radio.

_“The old mine shaft.  The military is using it for storage.  There are ten nuclear warheads out there.  No one knows.  We’re not even supposed to know.”_

“That’s how it starts,” Ianto murmured.  “They don’t need heavy weapons…they use ours.”

Jack cursed.  He was going to have words with whoever thought it would be a really good idea to store nuclear weapons near a large population centre, and then not telling Torchwood about it.  Their agreements with the various military forces clearly stated that Torchwood was to be notified if anything that could be used by a potential hostile force in order to take over the planet was being kept in the area.  Torchwood should have been monitoring the site from day one…not that Jack wouldn’t have argued against the very idea of putting nuclear warheads so close to Cardiff in the first place.

_“Please tell us we can stop this,”_ Toshiko was practically pleading.

“We’re going as fast as we can,” Jack reported.  “But don’t worry…we won’t feel a thing if we don’t make it in time.  We’re right in the blast range.”

“That’s comforting,” Ianto said sarcastically.

“Come on!  We’re on the case!  And how can a dashing hero like me fail?”  Jack pitched his voice up, putting a chuckle into it.  He didn’t actually feel that way, although keeping his team focused and upbeat was part of his job description.  He certainly hoped they were buying the act.

Jack had been killed so many times, and he had to wonder just how he could survive a full-on nuclear blast.  Certainly he’d lived through that weird radiation back on Malcassairo, but this…this was different.  Even if he came back from the initial blast, what about the lingering fallout?  How would it feel to keep coming back only to continually die from radiation poisoning?

He felt a hand on his thigh, and looked over at Ianto.  There were times when Jack thought his mate was a mind reader, but it was just that he knew Jack too well.  The comfort of the touch and the sympathy in Ianto’s eyes were enough to tell him that the dragon knew exactly what was running through his mind.

Ianto smiled slightly, and then spoke into the radio’s mic.  “He is dashing, you have to admit.”

_“What if they can’t stop it?”_ Gwen’s voice came over the speaker.

_“They will.”_ The confidence in Toshiko’s voice was heartening.  She’d obviously latched onto his projected enthusiasm.

_“But if they can’t?”_  Gwen argued back.  It hadn’t worked on her, obviously.

_“Then it’s all over,”_ Toshiko answered, sounding annoyed.

Then Owen’s voice popped into the discussion.  _“Let’s all have sex.”_

Ianto laughed.  “Just when I thought the end of the world couldn’t get any worse.”

_“Oi, Dragon Boy!  I heard that!”_

“You were meant to!”

Jack shook his head.  He was going to reply but he didn’t get the chance as the distinctive sound of rapid gunfire could be heard even over the sound of the SUV’s racing engine.

 


	11. Chapter 11

 

**_29 June 2008_ **

****

Ianto held on for dear life as Jack floored the SUV along the dirt road, toward the farm where the last sleeper agent was heading.

He glanced back at Beth; she looked scared, but determined, and Ianto couldn’t have been more proud of her for helping them stop what was about to happen.  It had to be hard, fighting off whatever was trying to activate her, but she was doing it admirably.  He only hoped it would continue.

They passed a sign proclaiming that trespassers would be shot, and Ianto wondered if that was what all the shooting had been about earlier.  Their suicidal drive had gone on in silence after that, except for several beeps from Beth’s arm implant.  She didn’t say anything, and so Ianto assumed that it was something to do with the implant and not what was going on up the road ahead of them.

He thought about what they’d discovered about the old mine.  Ianto knew that Jack had every reason to be mad about it; Torchwood was technically the authority in the area when it came to alien threats, and if an invading force gained control of those nuclear warheads – like they were doing at this very moment – then Torchwood should have been read into their presence. 

While there hadn’t been nuclear power back in the past, Ianto was completely certain this was one thing on the short list of things that could kill him.  Then he wondered about Jack, and if being blown apart by such an explosion would end him for the final time.

He shivered.

He didn’t want to think about that.

“We’re almost there,” Jack growled.  The SUV went faster, if that were possible.

“Do we have any sort of plan?” Ianto asked, pitching his voice as if they were simply on their way to dinner instead of a possible apocalypse.

“Not really, no,” Jack answered. 

The vehicle shot through a pair of wrecked metal gates, wheels spinning on the sudden appearance of gravel under the tires.

“There he is!” Beth exclaimed, her finger pointing from the back seat.

Ianto looked in the direction she was pointing.  A man was striding across the gravel parking area toward a large building that would have fit in with the abandoned farm look if not for what resembled some fairly high-tech security gear around it.

“How about this for a plan?” Jack aimed the SUV’s front bumper right for the intruder, who was ignoring their approach.

The SUV struck the man, sending him up onto the bonnet and then off, rolling across the ground.

Ianto didn’t think.  He was out of the car even before Jack had rolled it to a halt, triggering his transformation into his true form.  The dragon flapped his wings once and then pounced onto the still-moving terrorist, pinning him to the ground with one large claw.

The alien looked…well, normal.  The dragon doubted he would have given him a second glance if they passed each other on the street.  In his forties, with dark hair and eyes, he resembled one of any number of businessmen that occupied offices in downtown Cardiff. 

But then the iron scent of blood reached the dragon’s sensitive nose, and he noticed the red stains on his white shirt, and knew this was the alien, and a killer, plain and simple. 

His prisoner began to thrash, and the dragon pressed down on his body to keep him still.  As he watched, the alien’s arm transfigured itself into a blade, and the dragon had to twist out of its way to avoid being stabbed without letting up on his grip.

“Jack!” he called out, needing his mate to get there and help.

“I’m here,” Jack answered, kneeling next to the struggling alien.  He immobilized the knife-arm by the easy stint of putting his knee onto the terrorist’s shoulder, and began to run their scanner over the implant.

“You can’t stop us,” the man ranted.  “We know what your weaknesses are, even yours, dragon!  We know who you are.  We received a lot of information before you switched _her_ off.  You’ll all be factored into our plans!”

The dragon growled, showing his teeth.  “And we’ll be ready for you,” he promised.  It shouldn’t have surprised him that they knew about him, since Beth had been transmitting information from the Hub’s computers, and yet it did.  He’d mistakenly thought that Owen’s scans on him would be untouchable by anyone hacking in, but then he hadn’t considered a high-tech terrorist cell.  He was going to talk to Toshiko about even more encryption, since he didn’t want just anyone to know how to kill him.

The terrorist laughed.  “No one is ready for us!”

“Don’t count on it,” Jack answered.  “We know how to counter you now.  We’ll stop you.”   He stood up, pocketing the scanner.  “In fact, you’ll find your transmitter is now dead, along with your force field generator.”

“You’re lying,” the alien snarled.

The dragon twitched a claw, puncturing a hole in the struggling man’s shoulder.  “Care to try that again?”

“When are the others coming?” Jack demanded, taking his place by the dragon’s side.   He had his gun out, aimed at their prisoner’s head.

“They’re already here,” was the answer, and the laugh that followed was chilling.

The dragon felt the shock ripple through him, and he could tell that Jack felt the same.  If the invaders were already among them…how were they ever going to find an alien race that were programmed to act completely human until triggered, before it was too late?  It had only been a sheer fluke that they’d discovered Beth.  What would have occurred if those burglars hadn’t broken into the Halloran home?  When would their plan have been put into motion?  Would they have had any warning at all?

“You’ll never take me,” the man added.  He opened his other hand…

To reveal a beeping device that he knew meant them no good at all.

Jack’s eyes widened.  “Run!” he shouted. 

The dragon opened his wings, lifting himself off of their prisoner, who had begun laughing again.  As he gained altitude he could see Jack gather up Beth and drag her along toward the cover of the SUV.

The explosion caught the dragon and pushed him backward, and he would have tumbled if he hadn’t been able to control his momentum with his wings.   “Jack!” he called out, looking for his mate.

“We’re all right,” Jack’s voice answered from the opposite side of their SUV.

The dragon landed on top of the SUV, the vehicle’s reinforced suspension creaking slightly under his weight, and craned his neck down to look at Jack and Beth.  They both appeared to be fine, although Beth’s expression was more of awe than fear.  Her eyes were wide and her mouth had fallen open, but as the dragon watched her expression morphed into a smile.  “You’re a dragon!” she exclaimed.

“I am,” he answered.  “I take it that doesn’t bother you?”

She shook her head.  “Now I get it.  I was wondering why you could sympathise with me the way you were, and now I know.  You’re like me, in a way.  You’re an alien inside a human body.”  Her face fell.  “But at least you won’t change into a cold-blooded murderer like I will.”

“Beth,” he said, his heart going out to her, “you saved the world.  I think that makes you less a cold-blooded murderer than anyone.”

The smile crept tremulously across her lips once more.  “I did, didn’t I?”

“That you did,” Jack answered, putting his arm around her.  “I think you’ve proven that you’re more human than a lot of people out there.”

“But how long with that last?” she asked.  “How long will it be before they try to activate me again?”

“It is exactly that worry,” the dragon said, hopping back down off the SUV and changing back into his ephemeral form, “that makes you very human indeed.”

 

**********

 

“Okay,” Owen said, coming up from the Autopsy Bay, “I think we’re good to go now.”

Ianto nodded.  “I’ll go and let Beth know.” 

They’d arrived back at the Hub with the remains of the cell member in the trunk, and they’d immediately tossed them into the incinerator, not wanting to take the chance of anything happening to the corpse.  Whatever information it had managed to gather was gone for good, and that was the best thing for it. 

Beth had been silent but she’d watched the body burn until there was nothing left but ashes.  Ianto had offered her a coffee and she’d accepted, so he’d left her in one of the upstairs labs, where she could look down onto the Hub and yet be on her own.  He was certain she was still processing everything that had happened today, and he wished there was something he could do to help her with this burden.

Jack had suggested cryo-freezing again.  Beth hadn’t seemed happy about the idea, but had finally agreed.  It had taken Owen and Toshiko about an hour to recalibrate everything so they wouldn’t be fooled by any false readings this time.  Ianto wasn’t sure it was the right solution; the problem was, it was the only solution they had.

He made his way up the gantry toward the lab where he’d left Beth.  Through the glass wall he could see Beth…and Gwen.  Ianto growled deep in his throat, lengthening his strides in order to put a halt to whatever mess Gwen was stirring now.

He’d thought he at least partially understood Gwen’s motivations, but now he was beginning to seriously doubt if Gwen even knew what her own issues were.  Ianto had been all for giving her the benefit of the doubt, despite her hearty dislike of him, but this was ridiculous.  Beth didn’t need any of her well-meaning platitudes.  They only muddied the waters and made Beth feel worse than she already did.

He was just at the door when it was flung open, and Beth stormed out, anger etching her already strained features.  “I can feel it,” she snapped, spinning back and pinning Gwen with a glare.  “I can feel it coming, pushing me out…and you want to be my personal cheerleader?”

“We can fight this,” Gwen answered, holding one hand out as if she were soothing a wild beast.  “I know we can.  You’re as human as most of us here.”

“I’m not human!  Why don’t you get that?”

“What the hell is going on?” Ianto demanded, getting between the two women. 

“All I wanted was to be left alone for a while,” Beth replied.  “But she couldn’t even give me that.”

“Gwen?” Ianto turned to his teammate.  “Haven’t you learned that Beth doesn’t want you around?”

“You and Jack have her convinced she can’t fight this…this possession,” Gwen said hotly. 

“She can’t,” Ianto responded.  “As much as I want her to be able to, there will come a time when another activation signal might come, and then Beth will be gone.  Now, we’re going to try the cryonics again with the hope that we might be able to stabilise her personality with some form of future tech, but at this point there’s nothing we can do.  Handing out false hope isn’t the way to go about anything, Gwen.”

“And if the cryonics doesn’t work?” Beth asked imploringly.

“Then you already have my promise, Beth,” the dragon assured her.  “I’ll turn off the machines and let you go in peace.”  He hated to say it, but he owed it to her.

“Of course you can say that,” Gwen snorted.  “You’re not even human.  You don’t know a thing about human feelings.”

“You bitch,” Beth seethed.  “He’s a hell of a lot more human than you are, with your platitudes and your rousing speeches and your refusal to accept the truth about my situation.  He tells me the truth!  Not what you think I want to hear.”

The lights above them flickered, and one bulb blew out.

Ianto’s heart slammed in his chest.  “Beth…you need to calm down.”

“I’m sorry, Ianto,” she said, “but she doesn’t have any idea what it’s like to be human.  You might be a dragon, but you also know what it’s like to be in my situation, where no one understands what it’s like to be something other than normal.  I won’t have her insulting you because she doesn’t get it.”  She glared at Gwen, who was looking at her pleadingly.  “How dare you say Ianto doesn’t understand?  He does, more than anyone here!  He’s treated me with respect, and all you’ve done is give me your pity.”

The lights flickered once more.

More quickly than Ianto could move, Beth’s arm had converted to its blade form.  With her free hand she grabbed Gwen by the shoulder, and rested the sharp blade against Gwen’s neck.  Gwen’s eyes went wide in disbelief.  “You don’t want to do this,” Gwen gasped.

“How do you know I’m still Beth?  How do you know the alien hasn’t been released?”  Her voice sounded harsh and flat, as if someone else was speaking through her.  Her posture had stiffened as well.

Ianto had his hand under his jacket, automatically reaching for his gun.  He could see that it was, indeed, Beth Halloran standing there, her knife blade at Gwen’s throat, even though she looked more composed than she had in the entire time Ianto had known her. 

She’d made her decision about her life.

“Beth,” he sighed.

She turned her dark gaze on him.  “I will kill her if you don’t stop me.  I won’t let you freeze me again!”

Oh Gods and Goddesses, this was not what he’d expected when he’d come up to fetch her.  This wasn’t what Ianto wanted.  Even though he really hadn’t held up much hope for her complete recovery, Ianto had at least hoped for the chance to _try_.

It looked as if Beth was taking matters into her own hands.

His gun was out before he could think about what he was doing.  “Back away, Beth,” he ordered.

“Don’t do this!” Gwen cried.  “She wants you to kill her!”

Ianto was well aware of that fact; he didn’t need Gwen to state to obvious.  The last thing he wanted to do was pull the trigger, but Beth was forcing his hand.

This was what Beth wanted, and Ianto had promised her.

“I will kill her!” Beth screamed, as she raised her blade to strike.

The sound of the gunshot echoed through the Hub.

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter of this story. Please stay tuned for at least one short, and then on to "To The Last Man".

 

**_29 June 2008_ **

****

“How could you?” Gwen shouted, storming down from the gantry and practically flying into the main Hub.

Jack stepped in front of her, blocking her way.  “Toshiko did what she had to do.  You were in danger –“

“I wasn’t!  Beth wasn’t going to hurt me!”

“I couldn’t take that chance,” Toshiko said coolly, sliding her gun back into its holster at her waist.  “She was holding you hostage and Ianto was out of position to get the best shot.  I was just in the right place to take it, so I did.”

Jack was, in fact, pitifully grateful that someone other than Ianto had been able to do what needed to be done.  He’d been in his office when he’d heard the altercation, and had just been coming into view of the gantry where Beth had been holding Gwen when the shot had rung out.  Jack had only noticed that Toshiko had her weapon up and pointed toward the gantry area at about the time Gwen had come screaming back down into the main area.

He glanced upward, and saw Ianto still on the walkway overhead, kneeling next to Beth’s body.  His heart went out to his mate as the sound of singing echoed down through the Hub.  It was a song of mourning; not the one that his mate would use for a family member, but Jack thought it might have had something to do with dying a hero’s death.  Which Beth had.

He hadn’t been lying when he’d told her that she was more human for being scared about not being human.  Beth Halloran had been a good person, who hadn’t deserved what had happened to her.  She’d deserved to life her life with the man she’d married, and her husband would never know what had she’d done to save the planet, at the cost of her own life in the end.

“I’m gonna go up and help Dragon Boy,” Owen muttered, making his way to the stairs leading up to the gantry. 

Jack was going to thank him when Gwen interrupted, “You killed an innocent woman.  How could you be so heartless?”

“Heartless?” Toshiko exclaimed.  “So, you’d have preferred me to let her stab you?”

“She wasn’t going to hurt me!”

“You keep saying that –“

“Just shut up,” Ianto’s soft voice carried down to them.  Jack looked up, and saw his mate glaring down at Gwen.  “Beth deserves better than to have you arguing over her.”

Toshiko looked contrite.  “I’m sorry, Ianto.”

“It’s fine, Tosh,” the dragon said sadly.  “In the end, it’s all about what Beth wanted, and that was to be stopped if she was ever going to hurt someone.  Thank you.”

“I should have expected that out of you,” Gwen snorted.  “You wouldn’t know how to be a human being if the world depended on it.”

“That’s enough, Gwen,” Jack snapped.  “Since it’s escaped your notice, I’ll gladly point out that Ianto has been acting more of a caring human being than you have during this entire debacle.  Beth relied on him and trusted him to do the right thing.  She didn’t trust _you_ to do that.”

“That’s only because none of you would give me the chance to get close to her!”

“No, Gwen.  It’s because you lied to her almost from the very beginning.  Beth deserved the truth.”

“How is trying to give someone hope a lie?”

“When there is no hope to give.”  Jack held up his hand to cut off anything else she was going to say.   “Meet me in my office, and you can rant all you want.  Right now, Beth deserves our respect.”

“We’ll get her down to the Autopsy Bay,” Owen called down to them.  “Ianto and I will take care of her, Jack.”

“I’ll help,” Toshiko added, moving away toward the bay.

“I want to help too,” Gwen complained.

“No,” Jack said.  “You need to go and wait in my office.  It’s a bit too late for you to think about respecting Beth’s decisions now.”  He really didn’t want to listen to her go off yet again, but it needed to be done.

“But Jack –“

“Please, Gwen.  Just go.”  He couldn’t deal with this right now.  He could tell how much this was hurting his mate, and he wanted to go to him and just hold him.

Something of the atmosphere in the Hub must have communicated itself to her, because Gwen left without any further arguing.  Thanking any God or Goddess happening to listen, Jack waited at the bottom of the stairs, falling in with Ianto and Owen as the dragon carried Beth’s body to the Autopsy Bay, the soft strains of the song he was singing washing over Jack like both soothing balm and a wash of sadness. 

Ianto carefully placed Beth down on the metal exam table, moving the bladed arm out of the way.  She looked peaceful, Jack thought, and she most likely was.  She hadn’t wanted to be dangerous to anyone, and while Jack had thought that putting her in cryo-freeze again would have been a good solution this might have been for the best.  He hated even thinking that, but Beth had died on her own terms, even if Toshiko had been forced to pull the trigger.

He wrapped his arms around Ianto as the song faded.   “I am sorry it had to end this way,” he murmured as Owen began to prepare Beth for her final rest.

“I think it was always going to,” his mate sighed.  “The last thing Beth wanted was to hurt anyone, and that was her biggest fear.  She took the decision out of our hands, and I would have done it if Toshiko hadn’t.”

Owen was bustling around the exam table, taking his final readings.  Jack tuned him out and looked down at Beth’s slack face.  She did look at peace, and he avoided the obvious bullet wound in her chest not wanting to see the cause of her death. 

“Let me take care of this,” Owen said.  “We all don’t have to be here for this.”

“I’ll help Owen,” Toshiko volunteered.  “Jack, why don’t you get Ianto out of here?”

Jack shook his head.  “I still have to talk to Gwen –“

“That bitch doesn’t deserve your attention, Jack,” Owen swore.  “Isn’t about time you Retconned her and got it over with?”

“There are certain…issues with that,” Jack admitted, “but her time here is very limited.”

“It’s because she’s been here so long, isn’t it?” Toshiko guessed.

Ianto nodded.  “We need someone to know what we’ve done, and to watch her.  It’s why I want to meet with Rhys Williams.”

“That other-dimensional Ianto said that their Rhys had been set to watch the other Gwen,” Owen realised.  “You think it’ll be the same here?”

“Which is why I think it would be a good idea to read him into Torchwood,” the dragon answered.  “We need to know if he can be trusted.”

Jack was torn.  He wanted nothing more than to Retcon Gwen and get someone else in on the team, but telling Rhys Williams about Torchwood…it was one more person who would know what they did, even if it served their purposes beautifully.  It could possibly put an innocent at risk, and there were enough of those already.

But no.  They needed to fire Gwen, and if they did it without taking into consideration that she would most likely remember because of the more actual memories she had, and because of the more people who she would have told she worked for ‘Special Ops’.  There were just too many ways those memories could be triggered, and they would have to avoid that unless they wanted her knocking on their door again in the future.

“Gwen doesn’t fit in here,” he said, “and I’m sorry to all of you for hiring her.”  He was.  It had been a horrible mistake, one he’d made with the best of intentions but hadn’t paid off in the way he’d hoped.  He’d wanted Gwen around to help Ianto see what they were still fighting for, back when the dragon had seemed to have developed a hatred for humanity, and it had completely backfired.  He really should have listened to Ianto, that night on the roof, after Suzie had committed suicide.

But he was the leader, and he’d taken on the responsibility to hire Gwen himself, when previously it had been the pair of them consulting on new personnel, which they had with Toshiko and Owen.  Gwen and Suzie had been the two that Jack had brought on by his own decision, and they’d both turned out bad.

As if reading his mind, Ianto said, “None of this is just on you, Jack.  I was so focused on…other things, that I didn’t push you on it.  And I should have, instead of just assuming the worst of you.” Ianto twisted in Jack’s arms, so that he faced his mate.  “I did, you know…think the worst of you.  For that, it’s my turn to apologise.”

“Okay, so you both screwed up,” Owen commented as he worked.  He had removed Beth’s bloody clothes, and was carefully washing her body down.  “What are you gonna do about it?”

Trust Owen to cut to the chase.

It was time for Jack to make the decision that had been coming for a long time now.  “Tosh, when you finish up here, I want you to create two new backgrounds for Gwen – one if she and Rhys stay here in Cardiff, and another if they’re in another city, most likely Newport.  Make it your best work, because it’ll need to stand up to a particularly nosy copper.”

“I will, Jack,” the technician answered solemnly.

“Ianto, find Rhys Williams.  Take a copy of the Official Secrets Act for him to sign if he wants to know about Torchwood.  You can even bring him here if you feel the need.”   He hoped it wouldn’t lead to that, but it was best to be prepared.

“I have a few things to do first –“

“No, Ianto.”  Jack took him gently by the shoulders.  “You’ve been through enough today.  Let us take care of this, and you take off.  I’ll see you back at home later, all right?”

Ianto sighed.  “All right.  I won’t lie and say I’ll be glad to be gone.”

Jack kissed him softly.   “Call me and let me know what happens with Rhys, okay?”

“I will.”  The dragon gave him a faint smile, and then reluctantly left the circle of Jack’s arms.  Toshiko hugged him as he moved past, and Owen thumped him lightly in the shoulder.  

With one last, lingering look back at the body of Beth Halloran, Ianto was gone.  Seconds later, the alarm on the main door sounded, letting Jack know that his mate had, indeed, gone.

“I’m going to talk to Gwen,” Jack informed his teammates.  “I won’t Retcon her until we know what we’re going to do and if Rhys is going to be involved.  But don’t doubt that she will be gone as soon as we can get things set up.  For now, she’s on Hub duty.”

“Go do what you have to,” Toshiko encouraged.  “We’ll take care of Beth.”

“Thanks, the both of you,” he said gratefully.  “After this is all over…we all need a night together, just us and our family.  Preferably before you and Kathy go on vacation, Tosh.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she smiled.  “Now, go and get things over with, so you can get out of here and take care of a certain dragon.”

“After you’re done here, both of you take off.  I’m sure Kathy wouldn’t mind having you home for dinner, and I bet Diane will happily Skype with you until all hours, Owen.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Just don’t forget my own vacation, Harkness.  And remind Dragon Boy of his offer to get me a discount flight.”

“Anything to get you out of here for a week,” Jack teased, feeling a bit more grounded with their usual banter.

“Are we going to be all right with three people?” Toshiko asked worriedly.  “I can put things off until we staff up again –“

“No, don’t even think it,” Jack answered.  “You and Owen deserve time off.  You don’t need to be here when we wake up Tommy, and I think it would just be awkward if you were.”  He knew that the World War One soldier had feelings for Toshiko, and he knew it would be uncomfortable for his technician to be around and have to hide her relationship with Kathy.  It was going to be difficult enough for him and Ianto…

“You’re right,” she admitted.  “There was a time when I thought…well, you know he’s so sweet…”

“No need to explain.”  He’d seen the feeling between Tommy and Toshiko, but Jack was glad that she’d moved on to someone who could spend their time with Toshiko instead of being frozen in a drawer.

“Now,” he went on, “I have a date with a certain Ms Cooper.  I’m not looking forward to this…”

“I know.” Toshiko hugged him.  “But the sooner you’re done…”

“The sooner I can go home.” He wanted to thank her for everything, but the words just seemed utterly unable to express how he felt.

“Yeah,” Owen looked up from his work.  He’d started removing the implant.  “Get out of here, all right?”

“Yes, Sir.”  Jack mock-saluted, then headed up toward his office.   He could see Gwen pacing inside, and he recalled telling her she could rant at him.  This was going to get ugly.

“Jack,” she exclaimed the moment he’d set foot inside.  “How can you let Ianto leave like that?  He needs to answer for what happened to Beth!”

“No, he doesn’t.”  Jack closed the door behind him.  “He did everything right.  You, on the other hand…what were you doing up in the lab with Beth, anyway?  Hadn’t it been made plain to you that she didn’t want to speak to you?”

“I needed to make sure she knew we’d help her,” she answered, standing with her feet planted and her arms crossed.

“There was no help for her.  I don’t see why you can’t understand that.”

“She was human!”

“No, she was alien.  Beth Halloran was simply a construct of an alien invasion force.  It was a façade, Gwen.  A very good one, and one that I’m certain Cell 1-1-4 hadn’t meant to go rogue, but it was a façade all the same.”

“There was no reason to shoot her.  She wasn’t really going to hurt me!”

“You don’t know that.”  Jack hadn’t seen what had occurred, but it had been obvious that Beth had planned this, in order to die as a human.  And yet, there was that niggling doubt that the programming was being broken, and that the alien was coming through.  He didn’t blame Toshiko in the least for what she’d done.  In fact, she was glad she’d been able to take the shot and saving Ianto from keeping his promise.

“She was desperate.   You all made her desperate because you took away all her hope!”

“There was no hope,” Jack growled.  “Beth was never going to be free of her hidden personality.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Yes, Gwen…I do.  I’ve seen the aftermath of an invasion led by the cell, and there was nothing that could have been done.  Quite honestly I’m sick and tired of you not accepting that I know what I’m talking about.”  He stepped up into her personal space, staring her down.  “You forget, _child_ , that I’ve seen things that would make you shit your big girl panties.  I’ve lived a very long time, and I’ve travelled in both time and space.  You’ll never know just what I’ve witnessed, so don’t even think you know better than I do.  You are out of your depth, and I’m not dealing with you thinking you’re always right anymore.  You are on permanent Hub duty, as I said before.  You are going to sit here while the rest of the team goes out on missions.  You will not see the outside of this place unless you’re coming in from home or going out after hours.  This will not change until you can prove to me that you will no longer take any of your teammates for granted, that you are willing to watch their backs, and that you will not longer question my knowledge and experience.  Do you understand?”

Gwen’s face had gone red with fury.  “I’m not going to just accept your orders, especially when they’re wrong!”

Jack smiled, and he was well aware of just how shark-like it must look.  “That’s just it…you don’t know if my orders are wrong or not, which means you’re questioning me for the wrong reasons.  Until you’ve had to do what I’ve done you have no experience with which to disagree with me.  You are not in charge here, Gwen.  I am.  It’s my decisions that count.  Do I make myself clear?”

“Then maybe it’s time we have a different leader around here?” she challenged.

“Is that mutiny?” Jack purred.   “Because, if it is, then you might want to know that the punishment for mutiny in Torchwood is death.”

She went from red to pale.  “You wouldn’t dare kill me!”

“You seem to be really sure of that.  I’d like to know why that is.”

Gwen’s mouth opened, and then closed, and if anything she looked even angrier.

Jack smirked.  “I see you’re putting together just what you know and don’t know about me.  You’d be best to remember that I haven’t shared as much with you as you think I have.  Now, if we’re done here, I have things to do.  Go home, Gwen.  I don’t want to see you back here until Monday.  Think about your own definition of humanity while you’re at it…I’m quite certain it’s not what everyone else would agree with.  I know I don’t, and I’m sorry I ever hired you because I thought you’d bring humanity to our work.  I’m not ashamed to admit I was wrong.  We’re not missing humanity…you are.” 

“No, you are wrong, Jack…very wrong,” she answered, and Jack could practically hear her grinding her teeth, most likely to keep from saying something that really would make him put a bullet into her brain.  “None of you know what true humanity is.  You’ve all been corrupted by that dragon.”

Jack laughed.  “It’s more like I corrupted him!”

“This isn’t a laughing matter!”

“No,” he answered, suddenly glaring down at her, “it isn’t.  Personally, I hope you take what you’ve seen today to heart and learn something from it.  I doubt that’s going to happen, because I know you by now, but I really do wish you’d at least think about it.  Now, go home.  I need to complete the paperwork revoking your field agent status.” 

Without another word, he turned away and walked around his desk, taking a seat and rifling through the drawers for the proper form.  He found it handily, and wondered if Ianto hadn’t put it where he could locate it quickly.

“Please don’t do that, Jack,” she pleaded.  “You need me out in the field.”

He didn’t answer.  Instead, he began filling out the form, and he tuned out her voice as he did so.  He really didn’t want to hear anymore; she’d burned her bridges, and no amount of back-pedaling was going to change his mind on this.

This was only a stopgap measure.  They would be Retconning Gwen; it was just getting all of the pieces in place to ensure she could never be triggered to remember.

He found himself smiling.

 

 


End file.
